Huang Yong Ping

For “Frolic,” his first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping draws the title from the name of a ship involved in the opium trade between China and Britain’s colonies in India. During the height of this trade, during the middle of the nineteenth century, the UK and China became embroiled in what became known as the Opium Wars. While the British supported the exportation of opium to China as a way to balance the trade deficit with the tea-, silk-, and porcelain-rich country, the Chinese attempted to disable the largely British- and American-run drug traffic. Channeling the symbolism of this period, Huang stages a dramatic historical scene without shying away from its contemporary implications. Like fierce sentinels or massive oars, towering aluminum replicas of opium needles (all works Untitled, 2008) track the entrance to the show. Leaning against the wall next to oversize opium bowls, Huang has embellished each piece of paraphernalia with popular period motifs, some with loose references to Eastern philosophies. An equally enlarged wooden pipe tapers toward the mouth of a corroded statue of Lord Palmerston lying toppled on a bamboo platform. Palmerston, who served as Britain’s foreign secretary and for two terms as prime minister, was complicit in the initiation of the Second Opium War. Rounding the final curve of the long, narrow gallery, a tower of wooden scaffolding stacked with hundreds of opium balls serves as an absurd, and rather precarious, monumental arch. Wooden crates, imprinted with seal of the East India Company, surround the platform, while one trunk serves as a plinth for a large iron scale. Huang pairs a direct and highly theatrical language with a complex network of historical and contemporary references, refusing to allow narrative to go untested.