Karl Patric Näsman - 2016
Text: Ellen Suneson
In Karl Patric Näsman's art, we encounter copies, look-alikes and poor quality. His artistry is characterized by a search for a new type of grammar for art. Within this, the roles of repetition and craftsmanship must be elevated. The skill in imitating an original should be able to become an artistic value in itself.
Two of his latest art projects, Cattle Resting in a Landscape with Riverside Castle and Rainbow Beyond (2012-2015) and Shanghai Pearl Market (2015) show the enormous art copying industry that has grown up in China. In this industry, Chinese artists create imitations of famous works of art commissioned by mainly American and European buyers. The Chinese art copying industry has been sharply criticized in the West, where the paintings are not considered "real" art but are described as mass-produced forgeries. In Cattle Resting in a Landscape with Riverside Castle and Rainbow Beyond, Näsman studies the changing status of artworks on the global art scene. During the course of the project, he contacted a number of different art copying companies in China and ordered copies of a Dutch painting from the 18th century. When he then received the painted copies, he presented them as part of his own art installation. The art installation highlights the paradox of the Western approach to the Chinese art copying industry. At the same time that Chinese artists' imitations of famous works of art are not considered genuine art, there are countless examples of Western artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Sherry Levine or Damien Hirst who also used other people's work and copied other people's work, but who conversely count as some of the most important contemporary artists.
However, the perception that the works painted in the Chinese art copying industry are not real art is not shared by Chinese artists and galleries. Here, the works are instead described as "replicas" and regarded as originals. In the Chinese understanding of the paintings, the concept of shanzhai is central. The word describes the exaltation and passion for the "copy" and the disinterest in the original. In China, shanzhai is very popular and can include, for example, identical copies of mobile phones and branded clothes or people who are look-alikes. Shanzhai is often described as a way for the general public to take part in things that are otherwise only available to a privileged few.
In the art project Shanghai Pearl Market (2015), Näsman together with the Shanghai-based artist Jiang Weitao investigated the shanzhai phenomenon in relation to older traditions of copying and to their own roles as artists. The art project consisted of them jointly performing the act of creating an imitation. Initially, they agreed to use an older imitation technique where paint is applied to copy materials such as marble or granite. They laid out large canvases on the floor in a studio and then started from the technique, which is a kind of splash painting, to produce the copy. The craft was done individually, but they communicated with each other during the work. The result is a surface created with layers of small, different colored paint spots. The relationship between the different colors builds up an image that gives the illusion of a colorful stone material. The collaboration between the two artists can be compared to the process where works are produced in the Chinese art copying factories. There, as a rule, your artists are involved in the work with a copy in order for the execution to be as efficient as possible while at the same time the result must maintain a high level. Although Näsman and Weitao used the same technique, their interpretation of the technique differed. The way in which their expressions differ highlights the fact that the imitation of a work of art is not a mass production but a craft, carried out by human hands.
After the finished imitations, the canvases are cut up and presented both as individual paintings and as a decoration on a folding screen. In the work, the folding screen has a symbolic meaning. The furniture type originally comes from China, where it has been used as a decorative room divider for thousands of years. During the 17th century, many folding screens were imported to Europe and then, in a smaller version, also began to be used with the intention of hiding the body when changing clothes. In the Shanghai Pearl Market, the folding screen gives a clue to the old traditions of copying. Centuries of colonialism, appropriations and migration have contributed to copying having a large impact on image culture throughout history.
The Shanghai Pearl Market was also a way for Näsman and Weitao to explore imitation as a performative act. That is, to examine how copying itself is an act that creates and maintains particular meanings in different contexts. By creating a counterfeit of the rock material marble, it was highlighted how the imitation of certain genuine materials helps to maintain the materials' high status. In addition, it was made visible how repetitive practices in the art world - artistic education, vernissages, exhibition rooms and art criticism - maintain certain stereotypes on which Western art rests. Here you can see how ideas about Chinese mass production and the Western stereotype about the importance of
originality as a condition of artistic value plays a decisive role in how copying techniques are regarded.
Näsman's artistry testifies to a strong interest in how the globalized art scene displaces traditional ideas and meaning systems. The encounters between different cultural meaning systems highlight the individual valuation systems for artistic quality as constructions. Shanghai Pearl Market describes, among other things, how the Western art scene's strong reluctance to regard the copying industry as a cultural expression is a sign that something within its own system is under threat. And how the appreciation of the potential of the copy together with the disinterest in the original and the artistic authenticity is something that threatens the foundations on which the Western art scene rests.
Background
Karl Patric Näsman (b. 1986) originally comes from Örebro. Today he lives and works in Stockholm. In 2015, he graduated from the Master's course in Free Art at Konstfack. Näsman's desire to become an artist was based on a feeling of wanting to think and express himself. Art offered a language that made it easier to explore different things and questions. Today, Näsman appreciates art's ability to always open up to new perspectives, that it is always exciting and constantly offers something new.
