Gu Dexin 2021-11-12

NARRATOR:
Let’s take a look at this red chair. Something about the way it is presented makes it seem ceremonial. When artist Gu Dexin displayed it for the first time, he actually filled the chair with fat extracted from a pig’s internal organs, which will decay over time.

HOU HANRU:
This chair can be understood as a straightforward expression of the worship of power and money. It’s also about the pursuit of noble status, explaining the presence of the red carpet on the floor.

NARRATOR:
Art critic and curator Hou Hanru is a close friend of artist Gu Dexin. The two of them have worked together for years. Here, Hou Hanru shares with us that the meat in this work is a symbol of the shifting states of life. Meat is no less a product consumable by humans than it is a medium of decay. From birth to death, it embodies a fate that no one can escape.

HOU HANRU:
People have always wanted to see the fanciest, grandest narrative of what life is about, and to believe that eternity exists. But that’s just a dream or an illusion. What the artist was trying to do was to shed this illusion, shatter the false reality, and reveal the truth to the audience. Going from hope to decay in life—that’s the kind of transition the artist had experienced himself.

NARRATOR:

The original title of this installation work, created by Gu Dexin in 2000, was 2000-11-04. Now the work is retitled 2021-11-12 to commemorate M+’s grand opening.

When the artist first created the work, the materials used to create it included a red carpet, a gilded frame, a cushioned chair, and visceral pork fat, which was meant to be filling for the seat cushion of the chair.

In the exhibition M+ Sigg Collection: Another Story, which opened in 2023, the original version of the work, including the cushioned chair filled with visceral pork fat, is on special display for three consecutive days starting from the exhibition’s opening. Visitors can sit on the chair and feel the texture of the cushion during the period. After this, the chair’s cushion filling is replaced with polyester to meet conservation and storage requirements, and the work can no longer be touched.

The installation is shown in a rectangular exhibition area. A red cushioned chair measuring about 50 centimetres wide is placed near the centre. Sitting on the chair looking at the farther side of the room, you face a wall with a gilded frame that measures about 2.5 metres wide, taller than a standard door. The frame seems to enclose a red monochromatic image. Looking closer, however, the image is actually red acrylic paint that has been painted directly onto the wall. On this flat red surface, the artwork's title is written in small black letters. From the chair, a red carpet rolls out from the cushioned chair and reaches the foot of the gilded frame. The carpet is nine metres long and is almost as wide as the frame. The chair, the paint on the wall, and the carpet are all in a similar shade of bright red.