4:11 minutes
In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope. In midst of sounds of heavy breathing, the camera presents alternating scenes of a man and the shadow of a man wearing a long, pointed hat cast against a wall. Insinuating a sinister mood, the man and the shadow struggle to control the scene through alternating tugs and releases of a rope. The shadow dominates. Later, a human voice murmuring in low, deep tones provides a soundtrack to the visual ambiguity to produce and effect between something derivative of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and a mockery of human desire and struggle. The video ends with an epigram added by Chen: “You cannot, could not, be in the dark, about all the darkness”, an ominous warning of play on words seemingly urges the viewer to approach the incoherent narrative as a layered incantation of play on shadows.
Chen Xiaoyun studied ink painting at the Chinese Academy of Arts and lived as a writer in Suzhou before becoming part of the Hangzhou video art community. Chen’s works stages scenes of everyday life with elements of the strange and the absurd in order to explore existentialist themes through narratives of visual linearity. Chen is drawn to nighttime scenes of ambiguity, making use of shadows and silhouettes in concert with simple plots and fixed scenery to reconcile disjuncture in gazes and assert connections between the filmic eye and reality.
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
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The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
Malani draws upon her personal experience of the violent legacy of colonialism and de-colonization in India in this personal narrative that was shown as a colossal six channel video installation at dOCUMENTA (13), but is here adapted to single channel...
Marc Desgrandchamps — Silhouettes — Musée d'Art Contemporain [mac], Marseille — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Marc Desgrandchamps — Silhouettes — Musée d'Art Contemporain [mac], Marseille — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Marc Desgrandchamps — Silhouettes Exposition Peinture Marc Desgrandchamps, Sans Titre, 2015 (détail) Huile sur toile — 162 × 130 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et galerie Lelong & Co...
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Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
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The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...
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