Chair Impacted by Meteorite Swarm

One of Zheng Guogu’s good friends has a very characteristic face, and once the face was described as “one of the faces most impacted by a meteorite swarm”.Chair Impacted by Meteorite Swarm probably was inspired by this joke, but actually it’s much more related to Zheng Guogu’s daily art practice on the relationbetween humanbeings and the materialsurrounding us, particularly in regards to his recent interest in Buddhistpractices.

Here, we see a Chinese Ming dynasty – style chair re-designed by Zheng Guogu, with the surface of the chair dotted in such an a extreme way that we hardlyrecognize its original material, thus creating more space for uncertainperception. Collaborating with traditional craftsmen in southern China, Zheng Guogu transforms this daily instrument into a meditation space, which expresses very contemporary concerns: what is the function of art practice in mundane daily life?How do we transcend the material world into something more spiritually touching?

An Ancient Tree Grows Again

Cut off the roots and branches of a tree, which is one hundred years old or so,
to make it become a wood shape 10m tall and 1.8m wide by the root.
Move it to a new position from its origin and insert it into earth.
Then it takes root in the new place, turns into a big tree gradually.
Risk factor: 30%-50% *

There has been a working process for Zheng Guogu to do experiments on his “Empire” land, through which he’s tried to study how to transplant the old trees.The risk factor is high,nevertheless,through the experiments, Zheng Guogu tests and questions survival practices for new cultural environments. For this action to be transformed into a painting, Zheng Guogu applies industrial silk stitchwork onto the text proposal,overlappingit with a painted image based on the landscape of survived trees.It actually manifests the rebirth of a poetic life, both in the reality and the representation of the reality, thereby constantly circulating its energy.
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* This proposal was original a “do it” proposal to do itproject (Chinese version) curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.