From a quick glance through the large windows of Pilar Corrias Gallery’s Savile Row space, Cui Jie’s works could be mistaken for absurd AI images. Now that users can type nonsense like “a giraffe-shaped skyscraper” into AI-powered image generators, when a (real) artist conjures up such unique amalgamations, they have a different impact from just a few years ago. Jie has painted just this, in acrylic on canvas, with Ceramic Giraffe and State Grid Corporation of China, Beijing (2023): two giraffes positioned as if kissing, framing the somewhat mundane HQ of a state-owned energy company.
The similarity with AI ends there, however. Up close, Jie’s paintings reveal their hand-crafted nature and creative ingenuity. The artist does not shy away from rough edges or evidence of her process: “When the paint gets splashed onto the canvas, sometimes it’s not as controllable as I would like—but this is exactly how I want it,” the artist said, through her translator. This aesthetic could be compared to the hairline cracks that form in the surface of Chinese ceramics: Initially considered manufacturing imperfections, they came to be perceived as valuable.
Jie’s show at Pilar Corrias Gallery comes at a moment of growing commercial interest for the artist, who recently had a well-received solo exhibition at Focal Point Gallery in Southend last year. She was also featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2019.
Formed from layer upon layer of paint with cuts through them, Jie’s paintings in “Thermal Landscapes” amalgamate renderings of modernist towers and oversized ceramic Chinese animal ornaments, drawn from the artist’s own collection. Such ornaments, which date from the 1970s and ’80s, and, for Jie, symbolize the growing Chinese economy of the time, often depict animals meeting their mouths as if kissing, creating a circular motif which repeats across the exhibited series. The artist said that this represents “continuity, legacy, and what different generations leave behind for the next, the cycle of life.” Formally, the circle formed of two animals also offers a useful framing device for Jie’s painted architecture, a selection of unremarkable modernist towers from China, the Middle East, and Africa.
Jie did not study architecture, but developed an interest in it after moving to Beijing from Shanghai. Hiring a car for two months, she drove around the city photographing whatever caught her eye, which tended to be less the grand iconic starchitect-led projects and more what remained of the built legacy of the 1980s development following economic liberalization. It is the same context that draws Jie to the towers of today’s rising Middle East and African cities: Her paintings feature deliberately unremarkable architecture from Lomé, Togo; Dakar; Dubai; and Abu Dhabi.
Two Ceramic Deer and The Central Bank of West African States Headquarter, Dakar, 2023
Cui Jie (b. 1983)
Pilar Corrias Gallery
“Thermal Landscapes” reveals Jie’s focus on the idea of global exchange—exemplified through both architectural modernist principles and Chinese ceramics, which, from the 1980s, were also sold around the world as a symbol of China’s growing influence. Another work, Ceramic Kissing Geese and Shanghai Huaneng Union Tower, Shanghai (2023), has a backdrop of black and white geometric grid and tracks: “It represents the infrastructure of the city, but at the same time it’s also the vertebra of an animal,” Jie explained.
The show’s title draws attention to the immense heat and energy required to manufacture architectural components as well as ceramic ornaments. “Modernity is about heating up the Earth, and then cooling it back down,” she said.
Through looking at everyday architecture of growing economies, and considering them alongside commodified ceramic ornaments, Jie explores how built environments carry more meaning than simple aesthetics. “I want to see where modernity and its architecture stems from, and how its ideas get transported,” she said, adding that her next projects will continue the theme through an exploration of the post-war Japanese architectural movement Metabolism and its legacy in the Middle East.
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