The 15 designers, all born in the 1980s, look like the kids next door: clean, polite, and trendy. Then you see their design work that betrays their defiant and lost hearts.
Exhibited at the Seasons Plaza in the Finance Street, one of the most expensive commercial areas in Beijing, the work of these young designers is expected to "bring the concept of culture into consumption," says Deng Rushun, general manager of the plaza. This is what "our target customers, mostly well-heeled, white collar workers, want to have."
At the three-week-long Exhibition of Chinese Young Designers, which started last Friday, Bo En, a 76-year-old veteran and grandfather of two, was offended when he saw Luo Ji's Jitmu toys: the Devil series and the Clown series.
Toys, hand-made cloth ones in particular, are normally huggable, meant to be an intimate playmate for children. But Luo's toy is a deformed white body with its head wrapped up in black bandage, with no eyes, and one button as a mouth.
"What's going on in this designer's mind? Is he trying to scare our children or vent his inner anger towards society ?" says Bo.
"Call me die-hard if you like, but I won't allow my granddaughter to have one." Bo points at the toys, 30cm in height, and 10 cm in width.
The toy designer Luo Ji, a small man from the south with fair complexion, shrugs off the comment, arguing there is a little devil in everyone's heart. The only difference is the devil has been woken up or is still sleeping.
"My toy is just an outer expression of that inner devil. It's too bad if someone like the old man feels scared because they have no courage to face that devil," he says.
The 25-year-old Luo acknowledged "violence" is the devil that has been crawling in his heart since his parents were laid-off from the state-run enterprises in 1999.
His parents borrowed money and set up a small stationary shop in order to put Luo through art design study in a local college in Hunan Province. "Our living conditions were very depressing. I felt like an ox trapped in a well, the more I tried to escape, the angrier I became."
Eventually, he got an inspiration for a toy from a mummy. Now, he always uses his mummy-like toys as the outlet for his inner resentment. "This toy is a good vehicle. I make money when people buying the toys, and I get my ideas about displeasure across," Luo says.
Indeed, Luo averages 6,000 to 7,000 yuan a month from the sales of his Devil series and Clown series toys on E-shop.
Selected from hundreds of young designers across the country, the works of the 15 designers are "quite relaxed, humorous, and playful," says Hong Huang, CEO of China Interactive Media Group, which set up the exhibition.
"We hope people will enjoy the art and buy the goods as well," she says.
A well-renowned multi-media artist in China, Wang Jianwei says, integrating their resentment ideology into something decorative and playful is an important characteristic of these young designers. Compared to their counterparts of earlier generations, youth today are more practical and calm about confronting social problems."
Wang observes that the generation of his parents used knives and guns when they chose to rebel against the existing social order. "My generation was born in the 1950s. We mimicked hippies, wearing long hair and untidy jeans to reject conventional values," he says.
The youth born in the 1960s, he says, uses a sarcastic voice to talk about social order. But the youth of the 1980s generation, "their defiance of the existing cultural and social order is very gentle, hardly recognizable."
Interestingly, a mother of a school girl, Wu Jia felt that gentle defiance right away when she tried to buy a cartoon drawn by designer Zhang Shihao, 25.
"The drawing is delicate in terms of its composition and lines. But, I'm against its sexually suggestive content," Ms. Wu says.
The cartoon titled "Cheek-to-cheek dance " reflects a touch of Japanese Ukiyo-E painting. It shows an unfolding sexual activities of a man and a woman with their arms and legs twined together.
Zhang Shihao admitted that Japanese Ukiyo-E painting and animated movies influence him greatly. Yet, he says, "mine is an Ukiyo-E reflecting on China's urban life today -- vain, showy and luxurious. It's understandable though, some have problem to be honest in their hearts and acknowledge that life is not as pretty and pure as they think."
The customer Wu Jia, however, is fond of the calendar "eco" shopping bag -- a year's worth, each with the Chinese characters of one month printed on them. The bags are designed by Yao Ye and Li Xibin.
"I like their idea of combining energy saving with the concept of fashion. It's chic and environmentally friendly at the same time. I bought one of August because August is the birthday month both of my daughter and I."
The eco-bag, along with other works in this exhibit all show some sort of defiant or punk ideology, says Liu Sola, an internationally acclaimed musician and author.
Liu established her fame in the 1980s by publishing the hit novel, "You Don't have other option". Regarded as a milestone in Chinese contemporary literature, the novel presents a group of rebellious music students, including the author herself, who were using music to express their desire and anger towards order.
"Each generation has its own way of making voice. These young designers have a strong, anti-order ideology. But the way they express it is quite modest," Liu notes. "That's because the dualistic value system my generation experienced no longer exists. In other words, they're lost in the current time of Pan- cultural value systems. They're left wondering what they should challenge when they try to rebel. In a way, they are more struggling than we were then."
Nevertheless, Liu Sola really appreciates their design work. It's "very artistic, punk-like and useful." She spent more than 1,000 yuan on their works, including cartoon books about Chinese punk by the Cult Youth group head by Zhang Shihao in Beijing, and notebooks designed by Si Wei and Jin Ningning from Shanghai, who named their design studio "Perk ".
Actually, the Chinese name of the studio is Po-ke, or broken shell, says Si Wei. "Maybe, no one pays attention to broken stuff. Yet, something valuable can grow out of it. We feel that's us - we're nobodies today, but we're not pretentious, and could be something big someday. "
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article