It can happen that exhibition reviews are worth reading not only in relation to the show in question, but also—or more so—when pitted against each other. This is certainly true for “Time Temple”, Wang Jianwei’s recent solo project for the Guggenheim (ultimately destined for the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation), which included sculpture, painting, performance and an hour-long film. The exhibition gained mixed responses—many were less impressed than by Wang’s previous work—and two reviews stand out.

Robert Morgan is a contributing editor to Asian Art News; Richard Vine is the senior editor at Art in America. Both felt compelled to cover “Time Temple” at some length. Vine wrote “A Chinese Metamorphosis” —the longer piece including a potted history of Wang’s practice from birth through to the artist’s pet theme, “a gray zone of uncertainty.” Vine finds Wang’s “embrace of pure formalism” at the Guggenheim a “mystifying” departure from the socio-political thread his work had followed before; he notes Wang’s comments with a degree of weathered skepticism: “Wang replied, as he often does, in an enigmatic monk-like fashion…,” and chose to open the review with “I want to terminate Chinese contemporary art”—one of the artist’s more direct (though still oblique) remarks. While Vine’s review is seasoned with such morsels, its premise is largely to look at this show as part of the bigger picture of Wang’s oeuvre and of the Guggenheim’s programming. Indeed, the museum’s name pops up frequently in Vine’s text, and not just in the captions: who commissioned and curated this show, its budget, time scale and the “purchase plan” which “leaves the institution buying a pig in a poke”; “Pay $10 million; get three exhibitions.” Robert Morgan, however, steers clear of these details, burrowing as he does into the works’ premise and form.

For Morgan is ready to entertain Wang’s formalism in no uncertain terms. Signaling this, his review is called “Time Temple: Rehearsal In Search Of Form.” (Vine’s title echoes instead the eponymous nationalism of Art in America and a step back from the work in isolation). With respectable mention of the curator and the Ho Foundation, Morgan acquiesces to the show’s claim: “the rehearsal of a paradoxical object/event called Time Temple”, and proceeds with initial paragraphs laced with artist quotes and references to Wittgenstein, Confucius and Taoism and concluding with this difficult remark from Wang Jianwei: “Universality is vigilant toward any kind of particularity in order to clear away the remnants of details from the interpretation of things”. Checking himself, Morgan reverts to an extremely detailed description of all the works in “Time Temple”; except for the film (“The Morning Time Disappeared”, based on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”) that is, which is not mentioned at all. Vine does comment caustically on it, saying, “Wang’s narrative pacing is stately…and we are locked outside the protagonist’s mind…. Unfortunately, none of these tweaks are improvements.” One wonders why Morgan—otherwise precise in his descriptions—ignored it.

While Morgan does allow some concession to viewers (and his readers) for the potentially obfuscating, overly “conceptual” manner of the show, his article effectively adopts a similar style, falling in with the exhibition’s proposals. His analysis is impressive and sustained. What’s more, he finds that the wooden have their “own character,” with “exquisite finish” and striking details. The crunch comes when the dogged Morgan, on his third visit to the exhibition, turns by chance see the sculptures align to form a visual and conceptual whole: “I knew I had reached the universality of the form that Wang Jianwei had in mind. It was literally as clear as a bell.” Such rapture evaded Vine who, blinded by the project’s “over-determination” in the exhibition texts, found his patience tried by “a show that is respectable but inert, emotionally numb and numbing.” For him, there was no “holistic ensemble” of the sort that delighted Morgan; Vine was left asking “What is the key insight that these paintings and sculptures offer? Simply that things…look different at different times, from different perspectives…do we really need a full-dress museum exhibition to remind us of this basic perceptual fact….”

In the end, both critics are satisfied that this exhibition happened, finding much to say about it. But where one was tickled by its formal exercise—“This is the profound beauty of ‘Time Temple’…Once it is seen, the rewards follow”—the other refuses to play lap-dog to the Guggenheim’s maneuvers with “a show that is more compelling as a diplomatic move by the museum than as an art experience for the viewer.”