This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China. An antique open suitcase reveals a pile of rubbings and an air-dried peony, while projected photographs of the Chinese landscape appear as a slideshow on the gallery wall. The artifacts refer to a 1908-1909 expedition of naturalists, missionaries, and colonists to the west of China, which ended abruptly with the death of one of the travelers by unusual circumstances. The installation complicates notions of time, history, fact, and subjectivity by including readymade European artifacts with photographs made by Hu Yun’s own grandfather and a bell in the corner of the gallery that summons an attendant to recite a fairytale for the viewer. Individual experience cannot be separated from historical account, while past events cannot be separated from their context within the present moment.
Shanghai-based artist Hu Yun works in various media, including graphite, watercolor, installation, video, and performance. He brings together personal and historical events from different times and locations to create complex narratives that demonstrate the coexistence of the past and present. He invites viewers to discover connections between the elements of each piece and their own experiences.
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
Les Chenilles by Michelle and Noël Keserwany is a sensual film that translates the source of women’s oppression into the means for their liberation...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
Butter Mountain is part of an ongoing series of works that combines a sense of painterly mass and substance with sculptural language to examine the synergy between a topographical landscape and a landscape of the human condition...
Epiphany…learnt through hardship is composed of a bronze sculpture depicting the model of the little dancer of Degas, in the pose of a female nude photographed by Edward Weston (Nude, 1936) accompanied by a blue cube...