Co-Prosperity is excited to announce Gathering, Then Losing, Tong Liu’s first solo show in Chicago. Please join our opening reception on September 29th, from 8 - 11 PM!
Gathering, Then Losing, Tong Liu’s first solo show in Chicago, juxtaposes his two dramatically different and chronologically related projects: eating burgers and losing weight. The former begins two years ago and includes a large number of burger-oriented, surprisingly wide-ranging graphic works, small objects/sculptures, and videos. The project arose out of Tong’s passion for burgers, and in order to reasonably eat more burgers, the artist found a plausible excuse: making art from the byproducts of eating them. The project augmented and expanded, the possibilities of the form were appropriated and exhausted. After he had fully satisfied his appetite and overly gained weight, he ironically had to embark on the second project, which would simultaneously fulfill his personal desire to lose weight successfully that he had been craving and struggling with for a decade. The thought that this was for the sake of creating art gave the artist a strong motivation to stick to the diet and fitness plan. Tong eventually lost 71 pounds and conveyed his physical and mental suffering from this four-month "art project" in the most minimal format—an exhibition label. Again, the artist utilizes art as a means to help him reach his realistic and mundane desires, and this actually is his real art practice content.
While the two projects have great formal contrasts, they attest to Tong's consistent interest and thinking, i.e., what is the purpose of making works? The viewer can easily notice that he imitates the common forms in contemporary art, experiments with materials, and simulates some potential themes of the artworks. We may laugh and feel frustrated by these absurdized artistic formulas, and further rethink how much effort is required for something to be defined as art, at the very least?
"They were the means I used to coexist with my situation at the time," Tong says. His practice is always his reaction to his changing status, his specific intervention in specific reality. He believes in individuals’ creative practice in the face of their respective situations, and that art is only one of the solutions.
-Yutian Liu
