Huang Yong Ping - China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Jack Tilton Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the case of The House of Oracles… (the) second battle is the actual clash of civilizations that was the 1991 Persian Gulf War, led by the United States against Iraq, embodied by the two bulls outside the tent. Indeed, the divination diagrams written on each of them foretell which nation will prevail in the conflict. The oracle has proved to be correct, and I leave it to the viewer to measure Huang’s abrasive sarcasm and subversion. Oddly, I would argue that this conflict is worthy of note in a double manner, for in the context of Huang’s work it involved two kinds of war. The first one is a material war conducted on the ground. The second one is an immaterial one, conducted by the mass media thousands of miles away from the Middle East. This second war was an attempt by the American mass media to invade and take over public opinion. This media war might have been the more important and strategic one. Economic progress and the spread of democracy were never really at stake, and the outcome of the conflict appeared to demonstrate this. In the postwar period this entire region has witnessed a strengthening of Syrian and Saudi authoritarian regimes. Then, in between the lines, by predicting through divination the outcome of the war, Huang questioned the hegemony of the United States and called attention to the cruel absurdity of a media-dominated culture.
    P. Vergne, “Why Am I Afraid of Huang Yong Ping?” House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, Minneapolis 2005

523

House of Oracles (study for installation)

1991
Two black and white photographs mounted on paper with graphite and ink.
20 1/2 x 52 in. (52.1 x 132.1 cm).
Signed and dated “Huang Yongping 1991 [in Chinese]” along the lower right edge; titled “The Iraq Situation America and Iraq [in Chinese]” on face.

Estimate
£15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for £9,000

China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection

The Farber Collection
13 October 2007, 7pm
London