Cinema
2013 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Fang Lu
In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself. What appears at first sight to be a not unusual performance of self-choreography, becomes at a second glance a disturbing portrait of a – female – persona brought to life under contemporary conditions of attractiveness, anxiety and narcissism. Unlike her previous works, which duel more on the internal, surrealistic human conditions, this seven-channel work elevates the individual relationship with its socio-political environment to a more recognizable and appealing set of behavioral actions of self-awareness and self-inflicted anguish. Cinema , as a “portrait”, is staged in the fashion of creating a self-image in the politically guarded societal arena of surveillance and social networks. In this media oriented process of constructing a self-image, one experiences over time the loss of one’s, authentic, identity. In that sense Cinema is a “melancholic” portrait.
Fang Lu uses intimacy as a place for self-expression in her videos and draws out mundane moments from everyday life as a strategy to heighten one’s awareness of existence from the rest of the world. Instead of using the camera as a tool to document or capture, she stages a superficial experience, or “situated reality,” that locates the self in relation to a relationship, environment, or idealistic notion. For example, examining behavioral patterns of being in love or being sequestered in an empty building with nothing but circulated online images. For Fang, there is no one reality and everyone creates her own reality. Thus, her practice is an ongoing exploration of self-awareness and seeking realization of truths within experience, and the content in and direction of her videos are directly influenced by her immediate and living environment.
Colors:
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Yoshua Okón
2009Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...
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Yoshua Okón
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Zarouhie Abdalian
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Leung Chi Wo and Wong Sara
2010Office Lady with a Red Umbrella restages a figure from a 1980 postcard made from a photograph from 1950’s...
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Related artist(s) to: Fang Lu » Ai Weiwei, » Carol Yinghua Lu, » Chen Wei, » Chen Zhou, » Huang Ran, » Li Ran, » Liu Ding
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Catherine Opie
1987Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
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