Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Geng Jianyi (1962-2017) was not one of those artists who seek to dazzle the crowds with spectacular stunts. This pioneer of Chinese conceptual art, a major figure of the 1985 New Wave, spent more than three decades dismantling the most banal mechanisms of our daily existence with the precision of a watchmaker and the biting irony of an extraterrestrial observer. His work, deceptively simple, reveals the absurdities of our social conventions by subjecting them to a clinical gaze that strips them of their natural obviousness.
The artist developed early on this disturbing ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, not through any embellishment operation, but through an inverse process of systematic deconstruction. In his Forms and Certificates (1988), where he distributes fictitious questionnaires to participants of an avant-garde art conference, Geng Jianyi already reveals this particular approach that consists of using the very tools of administration to denounce its arbitrariness. This emblematic work functions as a mirror held up to art institutions, revealing their tendency toward bureaucracy even at the heart of their revolutionary pretensions.
The literary echo of Cortázar
Geng Jianyi’s approach finds a striking echo in the work of the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, particularly in his collection Historias de cronopios y de famas (in French Cronopes et Fameux) (1962) [1]. Just as the Chinese artist breaks down the action of applauding into three precise stages in Three Times of Applause (1994) or details the seven phases of dressing in Seven Times to Dress (1991), Cortázar proposes his famous “Instructions for crying” or “Instructions for climbing stairs”. This kinship is no accident: it reveals a shared sensitivity to the absurdity of our daily automatisms.
For Cortázar, these trivial instructions aim to awaken our sleeping consciousness toward the mechanical gestures of existence. The Argentine writer details with feigned seriousness the “correct way to cry,” specifying that “average or ordinary crying consists of a general contraction of the face, a spasmodic sound accompanied by tears and mucus” and that “the average duration of crying is three minutes” [1]. This clinical dissection of emotion reveals the absurdity of trying to codify the uncodifiable, turning the spontaneous act into a derisory performance.
Geng Jianyi performs a similar approach when he breaks down applause, the social gesture par excellence, into photographic sequences accompanied by musical instructions. This analytical approach to the everyday reveals the theatrical dimension of our most natural behaviors. The Chinese artist, like Cortázar, confronts us with the fundamental strangeness of our social rituals by depriving them of their reassuring automatism.
The irony of Cortázar lies in the contradiction between the pseudo-scientific precision of his instructions and the manifest impossibility of reducing the human experience to protocols. Geng Jianyi exploits this same contradiction when he proposes “instructions” for acts as simple as dressing or applauding, revealing that culture may be nothing more than a collection of arbitrary conventions. The Chinese artist even pushes this logic further by stating: “Teaching people how to perform daily acts is a particular intention; once the acts ‘are cultivated’, it means the instinct is lost.”
This shared vision between the Argentine writer and the Chinese artist is rooted in a common understanding of modernity as alienation. Both grasp that our contemporary societies tend to codify, normalize, and institutionalize even the most intimate gestures, depriving the individual of their original spontaneity. Their respective works function as revealers of this social mechanism, restoring a measure of freedom simply by making the invisible visible.
The playful dimension present in both artists should not mask the depth of their philosophical inquiry. When Cortázar invents his Cronopes, whimsical beings who “throw away postage stamps they find ugly” or “dip toast into their natural tears,” he implicitly raises the question of social normality. Similarly, when Geng Jianyi organizes his participatory collaborations such as Who is he? (1994), where he investigates the identity of a mysterious visitor by questioning his neighbors, he questions our mechanisms of social identification and the construction of otherness.
This anthropological approach to daily life reveals in both creators a shared fascination with the mechanisms of constructing social meaning. They share the intuition that art can serve as an instrument to unveil the tacit conventions that govern our lives. Their respective works operate as thought experiments that compel us to reconsider the deceptive obviousness of our habits.
Simmel and the sociology of forms
Geng Jianyi’s work finds another conceptual resonance in the sociology of Georg Simmel (1858-1918), particularly in his theorization of the relationships between the individual and modern social forms [2]. The German sociologist develops an analysis of modernity that singularly illuminates Geng Jianyi’s artistic approach, notably in his understanding of the mechanisms of cultural objectification and their effects on individual subjectivity.
Simmel theorizes what he calls the “tragedy of culture,” a process by which human productions acquire autonomy that ultimately imposes itself on individuals themselves. This dynamic finds a striking illustration in Geng Jianyi’s installation Tap Water Factory (1987/2022), a labyrinthine work where visitors become simultaneously observers and observed through openings cut into partitions. This installation literally materializes Simmel’s concept of reciprocal action (Wechselwirkung), a fundamental principle according to which society arises from the constant interaction between individuals.
For Simmel, modernity is characterized by an increasing intellectualization of social relationships, a phenomenon he particularly analyzes in his study of urban life. The sociologist observes that the inhabitant of metropolises develops an “attitude of reserve” as a psychological protection mechanism against the sensory overload of the urban environment [2]. This analysis finds a remarkable echo in Geng Jianyi’s series Visage (2001), where the artist uses photosensitive paper to create ghostly portraits, reduced to the minimal features necessary for facial identification.
This reduction of individuality to its essential components reveals the same concern as Simmel’s regarding the effects of modern social differentiation. The German sociologist shows how the monetary economy frees the individual from traditional personal dependencies while subjecting him to new forms of objectification. Geng Jianyi explores this tension in his participatory works where he solicits public collaboration, as in Besoins de la Réalité Négative (1995), a project in which he collects and exhibits the trash thrown away by his fellow artists in residence.
The notion of social form in Simmel finds a concrete application in Geng Jianyi’s methodological approach. The Chinese artist develops what he calls the “50 percent” method, whereby the artist only completes half of the work, leaving the audience to complete its meaning through participation. This conception reveals an intuitive understanding of the fundamentally relational character of social life, a central principle of sociology in Simmel.
Simmel analyzes how social forms acquire their own logic that can conflict with individual aspirations. This tension clearly appears in Geng Jianyi’s artistic practice, particularly in his works using administrative and bureaucratic codes. When he distributes fake certificates of artistic participation or organizes exhibitions based on seemingly arbitrary criteria such as “November 26, 1994 as reason” (1994), the artist reveals the absurdity of institutional logics while demonstrating their power of social structuring.
Simmel’s sociology also illuminates the temporal dimension of Geng Jianyi’s work. The German sociologist emphasizes the processual nature of socialization, conceived as “action of a society in the making” rather than as a fixed structure. This dynamic vision corresponds exactly to Geng Jianyi’s approach, which favors processes over results, interactions over finished objects. The Chinese artist also stipulates in his will that no solo exhibition should be organized within five years following his death, revealing his keen awareness of the temporal dimension necessary for the maturation of artistic meaning.
Simmel’s analysis of modern individualism allows understanding of Geng Jianyi’s singular position in the contemporary Chinese art scene. As the German sociologist notes, modernity produces a new type of individuality, no longer defined by belonging to traditional groups but by the unique intersection of different social circles. This conception of individuality as a convergence point of multiple relationships corresponds to Geng Jianyi’s collaborative practice, which makes each work the result of specific interactions with diverse participants.
Art as a social revealer
Geng Jianyi’s originality lies in his ability to transform sociological investigation into an aesthetic experience. His works function as experimental devices that unveil the typically invisible mechanisms of social construction. This approach finds its most accomplished form in Who is he? (1994), a meticulous inquiry into the identity of an unknown visitor conducted with the artist’s neighbors. This work exemplifies Geng Jianyi’s method: transforming a mundane situation into a revelation of social identification processes.
The installation Tap Water Factory, created in 2022 based on the 1987 plans, materializes this ambition to create situations where conventional social roles are questioned. Visitors concretely experience the reversibility of the observer and the observed positions, discovering through direct experience the relativity of these seemingly fixed categories. This work functions as a metaphor for the urban distribution circuit: filtered water returns as wastewater to be filtered again, just as individuals constantly alternate between the roles of spectator and spectacle in modern social space.
The critical dimension of this approach does not lie in an explicit denunciation but in revealing the arbitrariness of social conventions. When Geng Jianyi photographs shadows on water (Water Shadow, 2000-2001) or documents the existence of ordinary people through their identity photos (Absolutely Her, 1998/2012), he reveals the fragility of the signs through which we construct our social identities. These works pose the fundamental question of what constitutes an individual’s social existence: is it institutional recognition, the gaze of others, or something elusive that escapes any codification?
Geng Jianyi’s irony, never aggressive but always present, reveals the contradictions of our time. His Handcrafted Books (1990-2006), bricolage volumes exploring the processes of reproduction and manual fabrication, question our relationship to authenticity in a mass production society. These hybrid objects, neither entirely books nor entirely sculptures, materialize the tensions between industrial production and individual creation, between standardization and uniqueness.
The collaborative approach developed by Geng Jianyi reveals a profound understanding of the democratic issues in contemporary art. By refusing the position of sole author to place himself as an organizer of collective experiences, the artist questions the traditional hierarchies of the art world. This stance finds its most radical expression in his teaching activities at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, where he developed a pedagogy based on the principle that “art can be learned but cannot be taught.”
This educational philosophy reveals the deep coherence of Geng Jianyi’s work. The artist does not seek to transmit technical skills but to awaken in his students a critical sensitivity to artistic and social conventions. This approach corresponds exactly to the function his works fulfill for the public: not to deliver pre-established messages but to create the conditions for individual awareness.
Geng Jianyi’s legacy in contemporary Chinese art far exceeds his individual achievements. He opened an artistic path that allows questioning social transformations without falling into direct political denunciation or decorative aestheticism. This middle position, particularly delicate to maintain in the Chinese context, testifies to the artist’s strategic intelligence as much as to his conceptual depth.
His latest works, created in Japan in 2016 from paper pulp, reveal an evolution towards a more direct materiality, as if the artist wanted to touch the very substance of his conceptual concerns. These pieces, with a radically simple form, condense thirty years of research on the relationships between form and content, process and result, individual and collective.
Geng Jianyi’s art teaches us that the most effective social criticism does not necessarily involve direct confrontation but subtle shifts in perspective. By transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary through the simple operation of artistic attention, he reveals the usually invisible mechanisms of our social existence. His work functions like a photographic developer that brings out the latent structures of our daily life, forcing us to reconsider the deceptive obviousness of our habits.
This ability to make the familiar strange is perhaps Geng Jianyi’s most valuable contribution to contemporary art. In an era marked by the acceleration of social transformations and the increasing standardization of behaviors, his work reminds us of the importance of keeping alive our capacity for wonder at the world around us. It invites us to cultivate this “uncanny strangeness” of the everyday that alone can protect us from the numbing of critical consciousness.
Geng Jianyi thus bequeaths us a method as much as a body of work: one that consists of taking seriously the apparent futility of our daily gestures to discover the deep stakes of our modern condition. In this, Geng Jianyi establishes himself as one of the most penetrating observers of his time, an anthropologist of the present whose discoveries continue to illuminate our understanding of contemporary societies.
- Julio Cortázar, Cronopes et Fameux, translated by Laure Guille-Bataillon, Paris, Gallimard, 1968.
- Georg Simmel, Sociologie. Études sur les formes de la socialisation, translated by Lilyane Deroche-Gurcel and Sibylle Muller, Paris, PUF, 1999.
