Ge-stell Unlike his famed “night scenes” series, Kang Haitao composed his paintings for this exhibit from a vast void. He was neither confronted by fixed visual objects, such as buildings or clumps of trees, or light and shadows in the dark, nor deal with some kind of psychological experience, such as confusion, quietude, or melancholy. He is not even bothered by the obscure images in his finished composition – during a certain earlier phase, Kang Haitao often made up his mind about what the final image would be on the canvas as he began to paint. However, in these paintings, Kang was confronted by an infinite emptiness at the very beginning of his act of creating. The void facing the painter is none other than the blank paper or canvas. When this small blank space lacks a pre-existing relationship with any object or context, “painting” is transformed from a noun to a verb; it is restored to an aimless act. In truth, Kang Haitao started working on these paintings in a casual fashion, then he made his judgment on the chaotic composition arising from his initial impulse before deciding on his next move. Afterwards, subsequent steps of the creative process may be described as Ge-stell.
Ge-stell is a term used by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger to describe what lies behind or beneath the essence of modern technology. He perceived the essence of technology and the modern world as originating from representative thinking, wherein the world is divided into subject and object. Humans have an instrumental need towards Beings, and Beings become an object which can be assembled and divided into categories. Ge-stell is a German word that was reinvented from Gestell by Heidegger. Gestell literally refers to “rack” or “framework”, and by adding a hyphen between Ge and stell, it was given an active role. For Heidegger, Ge-stell is a challenging, or performative "gathering together", for the purpose of revealing or presentation.
For Kang Haitao, Ge-stell is, first of all, the implication of image. Many of his recent paintings reveal images similar to rack or framework. Secondly, Ge-stell is a painting style for Kang. He repeatedly experimented with long bars to either divide or concentrate space. Lastly, Ge-stell is Kang’s definition towards painting. Kang Haitao’s paintings are not descriptions of any existing objects but a continual development of an unknown composition. The process of creating a composition, or his manner of painting, has become the context of his creative work.
Today, people customarily regard Kang Haitao’s Ge-stell works as “abstract” painting. Nevertheless, it is worthy of note that there is a difference between “‘abstract’ as a style” and “‘abstract’ as an ‘-ism’”. The former is an art category in people’s mind, while the latter is a scrupulous narrative of art history. In China, abstract-ism does not occur in the narrative of art history, but this aspect does not prevent people from using an “abstract” concept when trying to interpret the works of various artists, i.e. Kang Haitao’s Ge-stell paintings.
Close observation reveals that Kang Haitao’s “abstract” works have in fact evolved from his realistic paintings. He has separated the elements of style and method from realistic objects, compressed colors and forms, yet at the same time, retained other features in his “night scenes” series, i.e. the sense of space and translucency, as well as the dark background. This distinctive trait is especially apparent in his work done on cardboard. The sense of translucency created by a thin layer of paints and the atmospheric translucency of the “night scenes” series are identical, demonstrating an unspoken harmony. What is more, Kang Haitao, in the course of his workday, will work on both his “night scenes” series and “abstract” series. They compliment and accord with one another, jointly accomplishing a sense of satisfaction with existence.
The contours of these works are often both simple lines as well as brushwork style. They cover the surface of the work and overlap to form a spacial correlation. From time to time, they create a sense of depth due to visual illusion. Moreover, his contours are arranged so as to produce a contrast between light and darkness. In this manner, Kang Haitao’s works are very different from the “abstract-ism”, as found in the art history narrative, because he does not care to include the planarity and nonfigurative traits favored by abstract art. Often, Kang Haitao even goes so far as to intentionally halt the painting composition in a pre-imagery state, and employ a literary title as a means to imply the image of his painting.
From this viewpoint, the significance of Kang Haitao’s painting is not limited to the composition itself. It embodies a kind of world view and Kang’s existential perception. It is just as Heidegger suggested: the reality of art is more important than modern science or philosophy, because art isi the only weapon to withstand the paucity of daily experience resulting from the polarization and mechanization of modern times. Perhaps, for Kang Haitao’s works, the word “reality” may be substituted by a more appropriate term: “spirituality”.
