Wang Chunchen :When Surgery Becomming an Art
Along with more opened development，the contemorary art is more widely involved in social practices.The understanding of art is also more and more thorough.Art is no longer limited to the traditionalforms，but enriched with new connotations and expressions.Art becomes an open concept and broadens our thoughts from multiple angles.
For Han Xiao,he is firstly is an excellent plastic surgery experxt.His plastic surgery career achieves a great success in Jinan and wins high praise in the sector.He also becomes a leader in the sector.He works hard and abides by medical ethics.Meanwhile he cares about his customers with enthusiasm.He embraces his Carrer with humanity mood.He also devotes himself to artistic practice and creation relying on his life experience.In his life,art has two sides.Body doesn't only belong to flesh alone,but also a focused subject of all humanism and social.Therefore,art provides him the maximum space to ponder and interpret the body meaning beyond the plastic surgery.
Actually，Han Xiao uses surgery action to verify the possible artistic expression and to reflect the meaning of the flesh life in the name of art.As a medical treatment for the flesh,surgery has a profound history with complex and sophisticated techniques.Now，surgery has advanced significantly -- treating recurring illness,recovering body and extending lifespan.All these are the essence of surgery.However,surgery also gets involved in human's aesthetic pursuit,that is to say,it aims to improve the body's flaws instead of illness.Which bring a body revolution for human being,namely to become an artificial person through the plastic surgery.Surgery reconstructs people's body meaning,rather than treat illness.People realize body change through surgery.As such,the soul is not transcend but the flesh is materialized.The coordinate is based on human self-examination.On the one hand,it points to the aesthetic pursuit superficially to obtain instantaneous psychological response linking the flesh with life.On the other hand,it points to the satisfaction with external world.By reference to the others,the self-image based alienation system makes appearance become one of core consumption values and extend to the flesh alienation.As an old Chinese saying goes,"All men search for beauty."The flesh,mind and beauty don't equally exist at all.However,the stories of beauties are fully documented in the history bookst.Appearance used as a weapon is actually wounds of civilization after humans visualize themselves.
Surgery becomes more advanced along with human progress,and the desire to change body is much Stronger too.As a plastic surgery expert,han xiao knows the desire and anxiety of social groups to change appearance.That therefore motivates him to rethink the humanity meaning of plastic surgery,rather than view the flesh.This is also why he seeks the answer from books.however,the relationship between the flesh and soul has never had an ultimate answer.People repeatedly explore and solve it. Consequently,action art has become an effectiive method for people toseek the meaning beyong body in the contemporary art. Action art constructs an experiencing question for human beings searching the meaning of the flesh, rather than provides an affirmed definition.For this,Han Xiao reflects what roles his surgery plays in pursuing people’s self-visual image,whether the change of body parts or even sex ressignment means people realizing self-value.Conversely,more surgeries he operates,more puzzle he encounters.As his techniques become more sophisticated,he needs to pay more attention to customer’s requests.At the same time,his service isn’t reduced due to such tough reflection.
Han Xiao starts to seek the truth,cause-and-effect relationships between surgery and meaning,action and effect,the flesh and life,life and soul. These question attract him and motivate him to seek answers,With these questions in mind,he is absorbed in art. He focuses on the artistic utility area:why does art become a way for body adventure?why is the subjective body replaced by the objective body? Why does body action transfer from a material offspring to abehavioral process?Han Xiao’s puzzle in many year’s medical practices is shocked by the integration of the flesh spatiality and life time.After transforming the surgery action into the arttistic way,he suddenly defines the reflection direction:surgery is a transition to think over the body existence.By combining medical surgery and art,he realizes his multiple-status,both as a surgeon and an artist,As an action,surgery makes him to deliberate the existence of body repeatedly.This is an experience that other art media can’t perceive.Due to artistic interference and reflection,surgery directly involves in the long journey from the flesh to self-realization,and directly introduces the material existence to the problem of human subjective values,Through surgeries,body tells us all issues obout itself such as problems between body and society,body and identity,society and art,etc.
Either for a male or female,body is a disciplined body,Surgery here is a means of discipline.When aesthetics becomes valuable,discipline follows accordingly.With many year’ surgery operations experience,Han Xiao is fully aware of the whole story, When he uses artistic methods to conduct surgery operations again, the power construction relationship of body becomes more prominent.Today,he adopts action art methods to unveil endless mysteriousness of body. As he demonstrated,we would drift away from ourselves ever and again and fall into the concealed social power field.
Surgery is objective. However, does our body belong to ourselves? The answer is No--Han Xiao's surgery action art demonstrates this to us again.
China Central Academy of Fine Arts
Sunday,April29,2012