Drag

2006 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

4:11 minutes

Xiaoyun Chen

location: Hangzhou, China
year born: 1971
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Hubei Province, China

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.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » China, » Conflict, » Contemporary Surrealistic, » Film/Video, » Chinese  
» see more

Island
© » KADIST

Kan Xuan

2006

In Kan Xuan’s four-channel video Island , a series of objects like nail clippers, hairbrush, toothpaste, and house decorations are shot in close-ups...

Lift with care
© » KADIST

Hu Yun

2013

This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

Karachi Series 1 (Chandra Acarya, 7:50pm, 30 August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi)
© » KADIST

Bani Abidi

2008

The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Island
© » KADIST

Kan Xuan

2006

In Kan Xuan’s four-channel video Island , a series of objects like nail clippers, hairbrush, toothpaste, and house decorations are shot in close-ups...

Lift with care
© » KADIST

Hu Yun

2013

This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

In Search of Vanished Blood
© » KADIST

Nalini Malani

2012

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
© » SLASH PARIS

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...

Dancing Free I
© » KADIST

Jarrett Key

2020

Jarrett Key’s practice combines several modes of production into a single frame, incorporating sculpture, painting, and performance...

Colin Brant’s communion with the inconstant
© » TWOCOATSOFPAINT

Colin Brant’s communion with the inconstant – Two Coats of Paint Colin Brant, Lake Louise / Poppies, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / You might consider the title of Colin Brant’s quietly inspiring exhibition “Mountains Like Rivers,” currently on view at Platform Project Space, an invitation to a world flipped on its end: what’s inherently solid becomes liquid, what’s up is now down...

Related works from the » 2000's created around » Hangzhou, China  
» see more

Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
© » KADIST

Jiang Pengyi

2008

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...

Dilemma, three way of fork in the road
© » KADIST

Jianwei Wang

2007

In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...

A Gust of Wind
© » KADIST

Zhang Peili

2008

In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique...

History of Chemistry I
© » KADIST

Lu Chunsheng

2004

A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...

Other works by: » Xiaoyun Chen  
» see more

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Regard Eating Every Single Time as a Formal Declaration, My Stomach is Sexy out of Anger
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...

A Little Bit More Virtual Than Reality, A Little Bit Warmer than Craziness, A Little Bit Whiter Than Darkness, A Little Bit Longer than A heavy Sigh
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2012

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 Ultimate Form of PreRaphaelite Brotherhood
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

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...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Its Always Fun to Live in This Country
© » KADIST

Eko Nugroho

2009

Nugroho’s installations and performances have their roots in the shadow puppet rituals in Indonesia, particularly the Javanese Wayang tradition whose essence is in the representation of the shadows...

Unfollow
© » KADIST

Yung Jake

2014

Unfollow is a music video by Yung Jake featuring a man haunted by the shadows of a former relationship...

Arthur Tress Sought the Shadow Side of Photography
© » HYPERALLERGIC

Arthur Tress Sought the Shadow Side of Photography Skip to content Arthur Tress, "Boy with Root Hands, New York, New York" from the series The Dream Collector (1971) (all photos Ksenya Gurshtein/ Hyperallergic ) LOS ANGELES — The earliest recorded evidence of humans’ fascination with dreams dates to antiquity, when Heraclitus wrote, “When men dream, each has his own world...

Dark clouds of the future
© » KADIST

Prabhakar Pachpute

2014

“Dark Clouds Of The Future” is a cinematographic video animation of the abandoned gold mine in Brazil, Serra Pelada (“Naked Mountain”)...