The Fish in the Sky

Text from the catalogue to the exhibition The Fish in the Sky, Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, April – Sept.1 2024

The Fish in the Sky

Torsten Jurell meets The Hallwyl Museum

The Fish in the sky

It was in the Hallwylska Museum's collection of Chinese porcelain from the 18th century that Torsten Jurell first encountered the Qilin motif - a mythological animal from China. The sculpture was both beautiful and terrifying – composed as it is of various animals. A Qilin may have a head like a camel, a body like a deer, scales like a bream, feet like a cow... But even though it gives a scary impression, it is an auspicious creature. The meeting was the start of the artist's work with mythological stories.

The fish in the sky is not just a rendering of the artist's own version of a Qilin. In his work, Jurell reflects on the similarities and differences between Chinese mythology and our Nordic way of looking at things. He does not wish to depict the Chinese, but to incorporate it as a natural component in the work by being faithful to his experiences.

A significant part of the Hallwylska Museum's collection of Chinese porcelain is created in Jingdezhen, the city where porcelain was once invented. It is where Torsten Jurell has had a studio for many years.

Why a fish in the sky?

This is how Huang Pu Mu, Torsten's studio mate and fellow artist, describes the content of the exhibition:

Fish live in the water while birds live in the vast sky. The fish that may seem imprisoned in the water, how can it know the heaven of freedom? The fish transcends the limitations of space, the distance between countries and even the communication between people. In this context, the fish is not a fish, it is our personal, individual self. We are building a new heaven for ourselves, letting the fish have something beyond their reach, and conveying the ultimate, romantic, free spirit.

Zhuangzi and the fish in the sky

A fish several thousand kilometers long named Kun, turned into a bird and was named Peng. The transformation is central to a philosophical story by Zhuangzi (c. 369 – 286 BC), China's foremost exponent of Daoism.

The bird will then fly to the Heavenly Sea and needs six months to prepare its flight. To fly there takes half a year and in order for the wings to carry the gigantic body of the bird, the winds must be favorable. The bird must wait.

The little quail, which can freely fly where it is going on only one meal of food and be there in a short time, laughs at the tribulations of the big bird. The little bird does not understand what it takes to fly so far with a body like Pengs the bird. Little knowledge does not lead to great wisdom.

Ceramics

Through strong heating in a kiln, clay is fired in a process of physics and chemistry. Since time immemorial, man has shaped ceramic objects and fired them in a similar way.

Porcelain

About a thousand years ago, porcelain was invented in Changnan in Jiangxi Province in China. Changnan was pronounced "China" by Westerners (that's why porcelain is called "China" in English). The place is now called Jingdezhen.

In the quest to create ceramics similar to jade, experiments are made with different mixtures and temperatures.

A mixture of sediment from Mount Gaolin together with white china stone turned into a white ceramic that could be shaped eggshell thin when fired at 1300 degrees. It became the imperial porcelain and an important commodity both inside and outside the country. The East Indian Company in Gothenburg brought a considerable amount of porcelain from Jingdezhen to Sweden during the 18th century.

Jingpiao

"Piao" roughly means "float around". "Jing" stands for the porcelain city's name Jingdezhen. "Jingpiao" is a term for artists and craftsmen who come to Jingdezhen to get in touch with knowledge and tradition while bringing new ideas and a new style. In this way, the old shapes the new in a constant encounter.

Torsten Jurell is jingpiao and the works shown here are part of what Jingdezhen is as a cultural place. In fact, with Pisces in the sky, Jingdezhen meets Jingdezhen in the Hallwyl Museum, across the centuries.

The mirror

The mirror has had a spiritual significance in China. In the mirror we see ourselves, we reflect the light, the sun and keep negative forces away.

Qilin

Qilin is a myological animal - the result of a mating between a dragon and a cow. It is one of the four spirits that together with Pen Gu created the world (Qilin, Fenghuang (Phoenix), Turtle and Dragon).

Qilin stands for peace and promotes an auspicious long life. It is still an important symbol in China today. A picture or sculpture with Qilin as a motif is a common gift.

Xiezhi

Xiezhi is a divine animal similar to a Qilin. The difference is mainly visible on the feet. Xiezhi has feet like a tiger, Qilin has feet like a cow or deer.

Xiezhi's eyes are energetic and wide open. They can distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, loyal from treacherous. It has thick

dark hair, and usually a horn on the forehead. Xiezhi possesses high intelligence and understands human speech and human nature. When it finds a treacherous official, it knocks him down with its horn and eats his stomach.

Today, Xiezhi is the symbol of justice.

Fenghuang (Fenix)

Fenghuang is in ancient China the legendary bird god, the noblest of birds. It symbolizes auspiciousness and is often used as a metaphor for people of elevated status or morals.

Fenghuang were in the beginning two different creatures where the male was called "Feng" and the female "Huang". Over time, they gradually merged into one. In Chinese mythology,

Fenghuang is considered female and is often paired with the dragon, which is seen as male.

According to the book Mountain and Sea Classics (Shanhaijing), the shape of a Fenghuang bird is the same as an ordinary

chicken's, but with colorful feathers all over the body. Unlike the Western phoenix, Fenghuang lives forever.

Nüwa

Nüwa is a mother goddess and one of the three great deities. Nüwa is often depicted as a being with a human head and the body of a snake.

Nüwa was alone. She was bored and shaped some figures from yellow clay in her image. They started dancing. It amused Nüwa and she created more.

During a great battle between gods, the pillars supporting the heavens were broken, causing great devastation, flooding and the collapse of the heavens. Nüwa repaired the holes in the sky with five colored stones. To fix the pillars that held up the sky, she cut off the legs of a turtle.

Nüwas children

For several years, Torsten Jurell has created figures in one and the same form. They have changed form as he has changed over time. They are all molded in yellow clay. When he learned the story of how Nüwa created man, he found that his figures had entered and taken place in Chinese mythology. They were simply Nüwa's children.

Sanzuwu (the threelegged suncrow)

There were ten crows that lived in the shade of the hibiscus tree. Each crow contained a sun. Every day a crow flew out and lit up our earth. It happened that all ten crows flew out and the earth was about to perish. Plants burned up, people and animals died. The skilled archer Hou Yi was commissioned by Emperor Tang

Yao to shoot the crows. He hit nine, only one sun remained and life on earth could continue.

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Sound installation

During the development of The Fish in the Sky, a book has emerged with the same title as the exhibition (Ordfront förlag) where the work with mythology is embodied in words. It is heard in poetic form in the exhibition, performed by the actor Staffan Göthe:

Don't shoot the sun

Harsh is the light

that sears the wood of the hibiscus.

The bark splits and cracks

after seven days

rain and air now cool.

That is the day I take your hand.

I want to show you the mountains,

all so alike on the map,

as in those early days when you,

my dearest, boldly visited the gods

with your gaze.

Ask for whatever you wish – ask for this time,

glistening with rain and tears.

Clothed in flesh,

rapturously wounded by love

to snare the Qilin.

Head like a camel

body like a deer,

the eyes of a ghost,

the neck of a snake,

the stomach but a mirage,

scales like a fish,

the hooves of a cow,

the ears of an ox.

blood-red they are

like mulberries,

red as peach trees in the noontide glare,

like mountains clothed in red,

redder than their name.

Drink knowledge.

Drink wisdom,

drink sun storms,

slake your thirst, my dearest,

as Kuafu quenched his in the Yangtze.

Drink.

Savour, but do not shoot.

You must not shoot the Sun!

I, too, sleep badly – far from

what I need,

far from you, my dearest,

Kuafu chases the Sun.

We thirst, we drink,

we quaff it all,

even the sea where the Sanzuwu is born

at the start of each new day,

we plunge into the waves

in the busy tide of life.

We vent our spleen,

our entrails are on fire,

our bodies fuse in love.

Uncertain still, I read every word,

each so sensitively written.

In truth I feel such envy

for what you hide there in that recess

at the right-hand side of the casket

In your own name

between fish and bird

between Earth and Sun

you led six revolutions –

three ports of call, nine differences

Again the scorching sun.

Again the earth that cracks.

Fields of dandelions seed the heavens with feathery shrubs,

clouds of them, colossal

clouds of every shape and size, while we, you and I,

seed the ground, flooding the garden of the Prophet

with a sea of time now lost,

of incense and tamarinds.

Everything still lingers there,

out there in the afterlife of humanity,

all of it. Everything, my dear,

is there and all of it, my dearest, I long

to devour in an instant:

your lips, so black,

your black leather skirt,

black nylon stockings,

neon green trainers,

and the navy blue hoodie with Columbia University

printed in white on the back.

Your long black locks, henna'd on the ends

and that thick mascara.

The guardians of the crescent moon

cast quivering beams of golden light,

and houses of wall paper sprout from the earth

small, yellow in the pale light of dawn,

like plants, fibres, like the leaves of …

You find it hard to explain

how you drove all night long

in Fujian, high up among the mountains.

No longer is there any way back, my dear.

Not for you, not for me,

or Brancusi.

The alarm bells ring!

No rain,

no reigning monarch, no one wise enough to reign.

Hide, as well you might

behind your bag, your paper bag,

happy to have your Swatch watch

with its band in off-white silicone.

Sunlight dapples the plane trees,

now, at last, no one troubles to look.

And now, at last, we eat shao bing

and watermelon, too,

on Dong Yi Lu

a lorry disappears.

"Sorry."

"Well."

"Bye, bye!"

The Hallwyl Museum would like to extend special thanks to:

Swedish Arts Grants Committee

Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation

Swatch Art Peace Hotel