Chang Quan born in 1975 in Miaoming, Guangdong, is a well-known contemporary artist, curator and independent film director. He’s also the founder of the Poisonism Art, of Spring International Art (Hong Kong), of the Art Salon of the Wolf Bay, and of the Wow Art Platform. He now lives in Beijing.
An artist isolated by The Times
he has built an independent spiritual aura in the absurd world
The poison art of Chang Quan
( Qi Zhilong )
To the United States on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, no matter it was communism or fascism, the relation with the United States was not so important because it did not reject communism nor accept Fascism.Today, the Trumpism has impacted not only America, but also China. The shocking impact on the libertarian exerted by the racism and nationalism from history has never been so strong that it has torn America apart so badly.
The image of the United States as the savior of the world is being harmed. This upset of crossing chaos caused by messing up of between truth and wrong is shown exactly in Chang Quan’s art works of the Poisonism.
Chang Quan, with a global view, exposes an upsetting reality to us just like Dali revealed Europe a cloudy Europe in history.
Chang Quan's poisonous ink paintings
The world of evil and absurdity,
Acrylic painting on paper,46X37CM (2020)
Chang Quan's poisonous ink paintings
The world of evil and absurdity,
Acrylic painting on paper,46X37CM (2020)
Poisonous Rice forms with rice a skull indicating directly and flatly our worries and fears of our mind about unsafe food issues that has been there for years.Age of Baby Adults, shows us an adult man holding another adult feeding him milk from a bottle. So shocking! Obviously the milk is toxic because the feeding man is wearing a gas mask. What shocked me is not the baby adult sucking milk but the feeding.man who is just a symbolic image of the cold bureaucratic machine.
Skills of Balancing, can also be understood as a metaphoric irony of the bureaucracy. Keep the Root, might be referring to mandatory brutal policies such as forced education, forced vaccination. Congrats on Being Elected, expressing his defiant attitude towards political games.
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
Alienation, Absurd World, oil on canvas, 80X60CM (2019)
Now look at his paintings. He paints fast, sometimes 40 or 50 paintings done in a day. It seems that he just paint randomly full of accidental colors. No matter his early works or latest works, they are all full of sense of sadness.
Our pains come from our unwillingness of depart of this heartbreaking world. How can we survive this world with a broken heart? Chang Quan has an answer. Like what he says at an interview, how to detoxify this world, the answer lies in love and kindness among people.
However, the world never runs as the way as we wish, instead, full of conflicts and crisis. How does the evil side of humans appear? Who owns the truth of the world? When Jesus says he comes for truth, Pontius Pilate asks, “What is truth?” How do we understand what Bible says “I can determine to be kind but it is not up to me to live kind.”? Is there no kindness in humanity at all?
Changquan installation art works
Life is thinner than paper, 2018.12
In Chang Quan’s “Wolf Bay Art Space”, there is a huge sign of cross on the curtain of the stage. He has held many activities there for a few years, but that cross does not have any relation with religion, but a symbol of rebellion image: mutated, freak and alien, and those anti-traditional features are quite matching with Song Zhuang.
Song Zhuang used to be a dream colony of serious artists who hated boring life in different places across the country. However, at the beginning of its formation, this chosen location was to do with its low price of land. Before and after the 90s, without any hesitation, many young Chinese artists at that time came to Song Zhuang for freedom, defiant of so called “official art system”.
Fu Yuanmen village, a colony of freedom-seeking artists, is located in north to Da Yuan Hotel in Haidian, which is also referred to as “Yuan Ming Yuan Artists Village” by China Youth News. This newspaper report made this artist village well-known to people, due to that it was also harassed by the police. Although it was not an ideal place for artists, people still came forming a big colony. Artists kept coming like leaving Egypt.
Chang Quan came to Song Zhuang in 2014 when it was occupied pretty dense. As the capital city moved towards East, the government started to remodel the art village and got involved in the village affairs deeper and deeper. Between self growing and governmental involvements, Chang Quan found his inspirations, which is why his art was impressed with mark of Song Zhuang, where you will find a condensed reflection of China and illusion of Utopia and power of reality, which I believed was his inspiration of his Poisonism.
Changquan performance art
Changquan and Chengli，A Humanistic Age of the Retarded,
Songzhuang, Beijing, 2019.12
One of his classical works is a photo named I’m from Wuhan, which is the best among his series of works. In this work, he is wearing his symbolic arm cotton coat which was painted with different colors. On his head is a gas mask gear, on his shoulders hanging pieces of collected junk; on a small broken boat his standing has two skeletons and pieces of human bones.
Changquan's video about poison art
This shocking piece of work seems to have collected every ambition of Chang Quan, combined with hate and solemn. Chang Quan at that time was not a observer, onlooker or a critic, but an involver, part of it. The Poisonim contains the toxic not from itself, but from everyone and all of us are responsible for it.
In the time of popularity of Trumpism, how we can reconcile traditional Chinese philosophy the Confucianism and Christian was a task to accomplish for Chinese
intellectuals. It seems that it is inevitable that the western Christian culture in China exerts impacts on traditional Chinese culture.
Paintings by Chang Quan Du
"The Poisoned Mona Lisa - Series 1,2, 3, 4" Aacrylic on Paper,
77X53CM,2018
This impact is negative to each other. It seems to be urgent for Chinese culture to resolve the Western Christian culture over the past 4 years. The earth does not belong to one nation, therefore there should not be only one culture, but for all nations and for all cutures.
Plague,wars, hatred can be eliminated completely on Earth. But art comes with love,a general universal love for all people.
This love goes beyond nations and countries and religions. This is the mission of art. If there were a the highest mountain top city in the world, that city would be art. Chang Quan lives in this mode. He puts himself in there being part of it with no turning back for himself. When he recalls all his experience one day, I believe Song Zhuang, this utopia village, would be his saving land connecting to a holy place in his art practice.（Qi Zhilong, noted artist）
Changquan in Songzhuang, Beijing, 2015
Here comes the Poisonism Art !
(Chang Quan)
I can recall clearly that three years ago I said, “Poison Times” had come. As always,I insist that so-called “poison” is the painful point of our times and the main systemic point of the worsening fate of human beings. We will lose virtual and faith as humanity collapses in human sins, and eventually reach the end of self-terminated. At that time, many gave a peculiar shocking look and commented that I should be more “positive” rather than “so negative”. Speaking of “Positive”,I believe it is “poison” of a hidden dagger in the darkness. When we see its nature of that popular “positive”, we see clearly that it is trap of poison of humans because it is so hypocritical and illogical.
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
The world of evil and absurdity,
Acrylic painting on paper,53X40CM (2020)
Bill Gates says: Humans’ future catastrophe does not come from nuclear weapons,but from the invasion and destruction of micro-bio virus. Today the year of 2020,new coronavirus has spread all over the world and threatened human lives. It is the greediness and loss of humanity that has led to this tragedy. Those who are so ignorant that they madly and inhumanely destroy the universal eco-system with “human poison” and start an invasion of the whole world with pandemic. This “virus war”is a piece of performance art in reality. Everyone can be a victim of this performance art work, but no one can avoid or reject to participate in this poisonous performance (Extract from Philosophy)
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
Alienation, Absurd World, oil on canvas, 160X160CM (2019)
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
Alienation, Absurd World, oil on canvas, 120X80CM (2019)
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
Alienation, Absurd World, oil on canvas, 170X120CM (2019)
Arthub and Chang Quan (on Poisonism Art)
Mr. Chang, you are an artist and a curator. Among contemporary artists, it is not common. How does this shift of identity influence your art or your research?
Chang quan：What identity do you have is not important. It is just a social role
you are playing in society. The important thing is whether you have great vision
and wisdom. Once someone has those two, they become connected. There is no conflict between them. I think in this world nothing should exit in contradiction. In reality if two things collide, contradiction appears. But once the balance between them regains, this contradiction disappears when everything runs on its own track.
Changquan performance art
The Back of a Great Man, Huludao, 2018.11
Arthub: Your installations are very sharp and deep in thinking. They criticize society we are in so powerfully and strongly. Have you ever encounter any obstruction in your process of creating your work?
Chang quan：Before I started contemporary art, what I had been doing had nothing to do with art. In other words, I grew up through digesting all kinds of experience of involvement in society and my state of spirit and personality are relatively healthy, unlike many other artists lacking social experiences who are fed only by art world.Engaged in contemporary art, I can say that I was prepared. I know a lot about the whole evolution of Western and Chinese art, based on which I made my thinking system ready. Without heights of thinking and accurate life planning, your future would be a failure. I had negated myself many times before I set up“Poisonism” philosophical thinking system, such as from Collapsing Art to Destructing Art, and then to the Worst Art, etc. All those had been negated by myself. Those are not the critical painful points of human society, but only “the poisonism art” is capable of representing the painful point of human society. The Poisonism is a philosophical system, not simple drawings or paintings or performances or installations. Painters or performance artists are so common as dust which disappears as the wind blows with nothing meaningful. The Poisonism includes culture, structural system, the fake existence of substance, air and our twisted spiritual state, etc. “Poison” is a common existence for humans. Since we are in the center of it, we are the most entitled to talk about it. When you understand this, you feel like a sense of mission for humans’ civilization lands on your shoulders from the above. Of course, the process of this cause is filled with misunderstanding and unacceptance and hardships, which actually proves you are on the right track. No matter which era you live in, it is usually true that going against the current flow is almost always right. I usually say optimistically, “When you are recognized by others, you are in fact done.”So, on the path of pursuing the Poisonism art, I never hunger for understanding or acceptance from others. This self-confidence comes from my inner spiritual core, having nothing to do with others. I see my cause is my life-long goal and position. No matter in establishment of the theoretical system or in my art works, that is what my pursue of art is based on.
Changquan sculpture works
"Portraits of the Poisoned – Series "
Fiber Reinforced Glass, 35X26CMX12, 2016
Chang Quan in the state of payment creation, 2018
Arthub: You have conducted a video program named “Interview of Low Profile” on which you interview active contemporary artists. What is the biggest gain of running this program or how do you feel about it?
Chang quan：“Interview of Low Profile” is just an art program in form of videos which does not have much value of thinking, just for fun I guess. Speaking of gains from this program, I would say having lots of fun with it is the biggest gain if any.
Changquan sculpture works
"Portraits of the Poisoned – Series "
Fiber Reinforced Glass, 35X26CM, 2016
Arthub: In recent years, you have been promoting young Chinese artists through
holding unusual exhibitions of art. What do you think of the status of contemporary art or artists in China?
Chang quan：I had engaged in business of culture and entertainment for years before I got in touch with art shows. Since I moved to Beijing, I have met many artists in Beijing. And I saw their hardships and their untold pains. For them I established Spring International Art (Hong Kong) . And for two years, I had held art shows of selected works free of charge for my fellow artists, for which I worked very hard and went through lots of difficulties. Thanks for their constant support for me and my platform. At least, rooted with artists, the Spring International Art is a platform on which many Chinese artists get a chance to show their works. In front of art, everyone is equal. There is no such a thing called “big shot artist”. Those so called “big shot artist” actually started with someone unknown. Once one becomes a big shot, he does not need any help from others, so my platform is not for those people. These years, I have curated many art shows. For every single one of them I tried to think about and show its unique value instead of believing that good shows must be held in an elegant exhibition hall as many other curators in China believe. This is a serious mistake. Look at where Duchamp showed his work of Spring, in the Armory which used to be a small space known to nobody but later became a turning point in American history of contemporary art. The Armory Show has become artistic historic landmark playing a very important role in American art; Another famous artist Andy Warhol, one of whose important shows was held in a shop . The Spring International Art has held quite a number of important meaningful shows to Chinese art history, such as “Collapse, Pen Yuan Art Show”, which shows the living situation of artists who are struggling at the bottom of society and reaching the edge of collapsing point. In “Pure China”, “Mistaken Era” and “the Worst Art” exhibitions, many non-mainstream philosophical opinions were proposed. Finally, in 2017 my “the Poisonism” was put forward, which I believe really has found the critical painful point of our times. This is the Most Important contribution made by Spring International Art.
Arthub: To you, what meanings does art have?
Chang quan：I shot a video named “Art is Ridiculous” . How ridiculous it can get
depends on how much wisdom you have and how far your imagination can go.
Fake Contemporary Art
（Chang Quan）
Remember once in a conversation with a close friend, we for some reason came to a discussion on what defined “contemporary art”. We agreed as follows: Nowadays, many artists paint, but no matter what you paint, a peony flower or a leopard, in nature, they are just paintings, no difference or makes no difference in art. Actually so called “Art on Easels” covers wide range of art types, including abstracts (either cold abstract or warm abstract), conceptual art and expressionism, etc.
Almost all these art types can be called “residue” or “leftovers” from modern art times and western post modern art period in art history. They are, in a way, fake art forms existing in a context of the contemporary today. To me, such fake art forms are a kind of harm for humanity today in a metaphorical way.
Flocking together of artists in order to heat up one another is some kind behavior of self-abasement in nature. The book “The Mob” emphasizes that a collective group has no wisdom. Wisdom belongs only to some few individuals. Of course, to me, Chinese Artist Association is one of the mobs of the mobs. I am very sure! Once having tea with friends, someone talked about how great some famous Chinese artists were, such as Ai Weiwei, Xu Bin, Huang Yongbin, Cai Guoqiang. To me, these artists are puppet like artists in the western contemporary art world. They are nothing if you put them in world art history. Compared with great artists in history such as Marshall Duchamp, Boise, Kiefer, those Chinese artists lose their importance at once. Their existence only adds more lies fooling stupid public.
Poison paintings by Chang Quan
"Portraits of the Poisoned - Series" Acrylic on paper,
52X38CM, 2020
Please do not get me wrong referring what I have said to you. And please do not blame me and start to hate me for what I said because I am just a regular human being. In fact, I have nothing to do with it but Duchamp does. He is so “cruel” that he has turned all the ways we are walking on into dead alleys.
All the contemporary art works we are making are fake by nature, because all of them are means for making money and getting fames, nothing to do with art itself. Therefore,we can say that we don’t have contemporary art in China, neither do the contemporary artists. All we have right now are art workers.
Poison paintings by Chang Quan
"Portraits of the Poisoned - Series" Acrylic on paper,
52X38CM, 2020
The Posionism of Chang Quan
（Li Wake）
Time flies! It has been over 10 years since I left Song Zhuang in 2010 after I had finished my performance art “Home Assets For Sale”. But I still have contact with people in Song Zhuang, thanks to the Internet and mobile phones. A year ago or so, Helen told me about “the Wolf Bay” in Song Zhuan and I learned the founder was Chang Quan.
Since then, on my cell, I often saw Chang Quan’s works and art shows he organized as a curator, including one of his own solo shows, the Poisonism. I felt immediately closer to him like he was one of my long lost little friends whom I used to play with. This feeling might have to do with one of my installation works, “the Plungerism”The Plungerism was targeting at overall pollution, reflecting the reality we lived in, considering that plungers were used for cleaning up congestions of the dirt. Combined with my other two works, “Roundtable Conference” and “Scare the Public”, it often reminds me of the problems we are facing. I grew up in a childhood with groups of never grow up adults--those bird brains. However，one thing is good about it is that I always tell the simple truth, straight forward, never beat around the bush.
Goethe said, the more artists know, the less accurate they can get. Maybe that is why many art masters had childlike characters with which they were able to created great art works, such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Duchamp and many poets and writes, like Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Mo Yan, and Wang Suo.
Indeed, those bird brains can never be as good as those who are far better at “bewildering”, “depressed”, “ridiculous” and “black humorous”, but maybe closer in “Funny” and “Pretentious”. These adjectives are good for Chinese adult babies who can never grow up like sensible adults. Targeting at this “sickness” of the time, Chang Quan put forward with his Poisonism at the right time and in the right place.His works cover paintings, installations and performance. In one of his works, he sticks his head out of a “womb” of garbage in a dump yard, shocked and horrified, and his body seems getting stuck there, unable to get out nor move back in. In a painting, he drew a huge penis symbolizing power and desires, standing on the top with a knife and chop, dominating lives of adult babies.In one of his installations, a high hat, symbolizing government officials, and a scale for weighing commodities seem to tell people about the hierarchy and corruption of bribery. In another work, dressed up like a garbage man, he was picking up trash,… after that, he wrote, with his left hand, in Chinese characters, face covered with long and messy hair, wearing dark glasses, like drunken Beethoven playing Chopin’s and Mozart’s Pathetique.
Changquan Poisonism Art Exhibition, 2018
(Left) Chang Quan, Qi Zhilong, Li Xianting, Duo Duo (Tan Nianyi)
Beijing Quan International Art Museum
In this absurd world,
Chang Quan occasionally writes poetry.2019
Chuang Quan as far as I know is successful in business. This makes him quite different from those who are trying hard to make money through art. However, artists like Chang Quan are often mocked as “Freak” and “Idiot” .
I have to say Chang Quan is a man who is true, real, loving, and responsible. He
ries to be himself instead of attempting to fit in. He knows that people are “intoxicated” since they are young, and that is what his Poisonism is trying to
reveal and cure. Li Wake
A great trash man
Changquan Performance Art,
Beijing Songzhuang (2018.12.29)
We live in a society with poison elements everywhere, air, soil, food, water, political system, soul and spirit, you name it. The pandemic that started in Wuhang in 2020 spread world-wide froze most prosperous cities that were locked down as if the doom day came. This is not something that happens all of a sudden but a bursting result of years of accumulation of poisonous elements, which coincides with Chang Quan’s poisonism ideology: philosophy of poison /paintings of poison/performance of poison/installations of poison, just like predictions of life.
Poison paintings by Chang Quan
"Lei Yang Incident, Hit a Plane with a Condom"
Wood composite material,160X70X50CM,2016.5
Chang Quan, as a contemporary artist with spirit of Christian like spirit, has created a number of “poisonism-ed” series of works, including performance art, photographs, videos, installations, oil paintings, and Chinese ink paintings, expressing disasters ubiquitous poison has brought about to humans, warning people and wakening up their conscience and morals, respects and kindness.(Jia Tingfeng / Noted Curator and artist)
Changquan sculpture works
"Portraits of the Poisoned – Series "
Fiber Reinforced Glass, 35X26CMX12, 2016
Chang Quan holds a negative attitude towards Chinese contemporary art, which is something an ambitious artist should have. In China, so called contemporary art at least half of the works are a way of making money or a capital game, having nothing to do with art itself.
Changquan installation art works
Anti-corruption is always on the road, 2018.12
The poisonism is trying to attack poison with poison. It sounds contradictory that it would never be thorough and complete for him to negate contemporary art, if Chang Quan did not negate himself. The reason to say this is that there would be no meaning to negate contemporary art if there were nothing to affirm about it.
Poisonous painting by Chang Quan
Alienation, Absurd World, oil on canvas, 150X150CM (2019)
I have to say that the poisonism has its meaning in depth. The biggest poison is systematic political poison. Throughout Chinese history, there had been poison in the political system. Maybe the Poisonism based on Chang Quan’s individualism is a way to rebel and revenge. Like concept of democracy, contemporary art derives from the West not the Chinese concept. In this sense, China does not have contemporary art even in the Time of the Internet. It is certainly worth wishing good luck to Chang Quan’s practice and attempts, but if the deep meaning and the esteem and the spirit of liberty of contemporary art can’t be established first, there will be no meaningful results if the nation does not reflect on the poison that the Chinese nation has.
（Yu Xinqiao, Noted Poet and Artist）
Poisonism performance art works
"The False Age of Pretense" ,Quan International Art Museum，2016
The nature and the spirit of critics are to construct. True criticism lies in the narratives based on evidence, humanity and reflections, crying out for justice and conscience. Therefore, I have always believed that there some bold ideas like the Poisonism would come out drawing all the attention amid this chaotic times. （Cang Xin, Noted Artist of Contemporary Art)
