Chair No. 1 – Chair No. 6

2014

120 x 90 cm

oil on canvas

Chair No. 7 – Chair No. 10

2014

90 x 120 cm

oil on canvas

CHAIR

The Chair series (Chair No. 1 through Chair No. 5, all 2011) is comprised of five black and white paintings, each portraying a chair seen from a different perspective, metaphorically suggesting the dissimilar viewpoints people might have on the same topic. As is the case for many of Meng Huang’s works, his chosen subject is imbued with highly symbolic and multi-layered references to both art history and politics. The ordinary, straw-bottomed wooden chair that Meng Huang selected for this series is reminiscent of those empty ones depicted by Van Gogh, hinting at the fact that the master painter’s talent went unrecognized while he was alive. If a chair can be seen as an emblem of political power, Meng Huang’s represents not only that on which a dissident intellectual such as Liu Xiaobo might sit everyday during years of detention in his own country, but also the vacant seat the very same dissident left empty during a celebratory ceremony that he could never have attended, where he was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. The Chair series is related to a performance Meng Huang held in Berlin in March 2011 in token of support for his friend Liu Xiaobo. In the performance, Meng Huang bought the chair later represented in the five canvasses at the flea market and carried it through the streets until he reached the post office, where it was packed and eventually posted to Liu Xiaobo at his address in Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province, China.

Nataline Colonnello