Tan Tian: Sarcasm Was Never So Genuine
by Alex Gobin
Upon first impression, Tan Tian makes you think of a man who shows up at a fancy dinner party only to make fun of the host and of everyone else. Surely someone is going to ask him to leave, you think, but then you realize that the party somehow just got better. The guests really enjoy the man’s freedom of tone, and those who don’t are too clever to look like they can’t take a joke.
In this case, our fancy party is the so-called "art world", the art institution with its array of protagonists: gallery owners, collectors, curators, art media and, of course, contemporary artists. Tan Tian comments ironically on all of those people and gives us an uncompromising picture of what it takes today to navigate the art world. His work reads like a sardonic survival guide for the young artist trying to succeed.
Tan has an exceptional knowledge of the inner workings of the art institution. To begin with, his parents are both respected Chinese artists. His father is Tan Ping, a celebrated Chinese painter, while his mother, Teng Fei, is a well-known and successful designer. Like many artists of his generation, Tan studied Fine Arts abroad, at Kingston University in London. He then went on to work for WHITE SPACE Gallery in Beijing. With all these experiences combined, Tan has a thorough understanding of what a young contemporary artist entering the art world is up against, whether it be pleasing collectors, working with curators, being flexible to fit into collective exhibitions…
Through the grin of Tan's irony, the art career appears to us very business-like and stripped of all romanticism. His work is full of confidence in that respect. Tan challenges our common view of the artist as a disinterested idealist, and he does so in a very direct and rebellious fashion.
"Actually I am really not that rebellious," Tan says in an answer to one of my questions, "I make all my works earnestly and with diligence. I value modesty in art and always see myself as a learner." Could it be that Tan Tian isn’t simply making fun of the party, but is in fact much more ambivalent than he seems to be in the first place?
In one series plainly called "How to Make a Contemporary Artwork", Tan put together recognizable features of leading contemporary artists to create works of his own. The names of the artists from whom he borrowed are all included in the titles.
Doesn’t this look to you like a monumental pun on conceptual art? Tan piles up references on top of each other in a seemingly random and almost mechanical way, as if to turn contemporary art into a self-referential machine. If you look closer, though, this whole body of work actually reveals itself to be very ambitious. Tan went through extensive research, the series comprises several dozens of artworks and it took two years to complete. For him, he says it was a sort of training: "My purpose was simply to go through a standard procedure that makes one a contemporary artist." Here again, between his work and how Tan talks about it, you sense a lot of ambivalence. Either sarcasm was never so genuine, or ingenuity never felt so sarcastic.
Tan describes himself as a "skeptist". "I look at the world as if I was observing fish swimming in a fish tank," he says. "In order to gain experience, I go into the fish tank and become myself a fish, (…) This way, I become both the observer and the fish." This positioning is far from easy. By placing himself both as an insider and an outsider, Tan is running a high risk of conflicting with himself. But also this may be a way to repel a number of fears, the fear of being swallowed by the art market, the fear of losing authenticity, the fear of being pushed aside by younger emerging artists. The world of contemporary art can be daunting and it takes courage to lay bare one’s vulnerabilities.
The question is: how long can you do this for? Can you, as an artist, position yourself forever in and out of the fish tank? Talking about his new series called "Parenthood", he says: "Ever since I became a father and husband, I have tried to find solutions for all the problems I observed, instead of just talking about them or pointing fingers." Here below are a few pieces of this new series:
Sure enough, these still retain a strong flavor of irony, but Tan’s outlook is changing. For one thing he is now more explicitly referencing his own life. His work is getting more personal.
So once again, picture Tan at a fancy party, but this time later in the evening. Sometimes when you go to a party, your mood changes through the night. The later it gets and the more all the chatter and the lights around you seem to somewhat echo your intimate self. Did you ever experience that? It could be the wine, but it feels as if your mind was oddly blending with the party itself, almost as if they shared the same essence. Is Tan Tian closing in on that moment of poetic intimacy, at which point the separation between himself and this frightening contemporary art world will begin to blur? Tan is still young and is already a significant artist. We can’t wait to see what the night is going to bring.