Island
2006 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Kan Xuan
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. These highly polished and aestheticized images create a poetic visual flow. However, in front of each object lies a coin of different value—two yuan, one pound, one euro, one dollar—that silently reveals the material value of the household supplies. Underneath the video’s elegant surface there is a deep sense of critical irony, elaborated in the contradictory nature of the cheap plastic items and their sophistic visual interpretation. Kan poignantly and metaphorically comments on the economy and production at the base of today’s global market and shows that extremely influential visual spectacles can be generated by the most everyday of items.
Experimenting with painting, photography, performance, and video installation, Kan Xuan explores the everyday from a very personal perspective. Though she graduated from the China Academy of Fine Art with rigorous training in oil painting, Kan quickly adopted video as her primary medium. From often ignored daily life experiences as points of departure, Kan creates a visual diary. Here, the camera amplifies mundane activities to reveal absurd and eerie details. For example, in Kan Xuan, Ai! , she calls and answers her own name among the crowd in subway station; in Eggs , she squeezes and breaks eggs with her hands, and in A Sunny Day two middle-aged men laugh and tickle each other in a public plaza. In other works Kan engages feminist discourse by situating herself in uncomfortable situations or exposing her body, such as standing naked on a public pedestal in A Happy Girl or allowing spiders to crawl over her in Looking Looking Looking For! .
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
![[Online Course] ArtsEquator Introduction to Reviewing Books](https://artsequator.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/webbooks-150x150.png)
© » ARTS EQUATOR
[Online Course] ArtsEquator Introduction to Reviewing Books | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints July 13, 2020 INTRODUCTION TO REVIEWING BOOKS by Kathy Rowland Course Synopsis: This introductory course will teach you how to think critically and review a book, by drawing on both techniques of literary analysis and criticism writing...
© » KADIST
Phillip Maisel
2015While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
OPEN CALL: Southeast Asian Arts Censorship Documentation | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles September 16, 2021 ArtsEquator invites applications for the position of Researcher for a regional arts censorship documentation and publication project it is piloting...
© » KADIST
Edward Kienholz
1984Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...
© » KADIST
Anthony Goicolea
2008Goicolea has made drawings based on a family album of relations that he did not know but who in one way or another contributed to his history and to the predicament in which he now finds himself as a Cuban in America...
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS
Martin Creed
Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
I Was Afraid Of Critiquing Until I Met A Bunch Of Critics: Reflections on AAMR 2021 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash June 23, 2021 By Sukhbir Cheema When you hear the word “critic”, what image do you conjure? I used to imagine a bespectacled person; bookish, extremely serious, and tough to please...
© » KADIST
Mathilde Rosier
2003Rosier’s body of films, gleam with that indeterminate in-between glow of twilight...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Saya Takut Untuk Mengkritik Sehinggalah Saya Berjumpa Sekumpulan Pengkritik: Refleksi Terhadap AAMR | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash July 22, 2021 Oleh Sukhbir Cheema dan diterjemah oleh Fasyali Fadzly Bila anda mendengar perkataan “pengkritik”, apakah yang anda bayangkan? Saya sering membayangkan orang yang pakai cermin mata; ulat buku, sangat serius, dan payah untuk puaskan hatinya...
© » KADIST
Wimo Ambala Bayang
2011Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...
![[Online Course] ArtsEquator Introduction to Reviewing Theatre](https://artsequator.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/webtheatre-150x150.png)
© » ARTS EQUATOR
[Online Course] ArtsEquator Introduction to Reviewing Theatre | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints July 13, 2020 INTRODUCTION TO REVIEWING THEATRE by Nabilah Said Course Synopsis: This introductory course will teach you how to write and think critically about a show, from doing research, to watching, preparing to write and finally, writing and editing...