Salvation Mountain
2018 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
22:40 minutes
Liu Yu
Salvation Mountain by Liu Yu takes California’s history of the Gold Rush as its starting point. The single-channel video combines drone footage and animations to depict desolate ghost towns and abandoned mining pits of California, leading the viewer through an out of body experience through the vast American landscape. The viewer is taken on a journey, led by the three protagonists – a pioneer, a vagabond, and the avatar of a drone–to Salvation Mountain, a man-made mountain constructed out of latex paint with Christian sayings and Bible verses, and Slab City, a migratory commune in Southern California’s desert. Both communities remain decommissioned and uncontrolled, and there is no electricity, running water, or law enforcement. Delineations of time and history seem to disintegrate as each of the protagonists candidly give insight into their personal history and agendas as they sit around a campfire, revealing California’s past, present, and even future. Liu Yu employs gold as a symbol to explore ideas such as social status, exploration, and settler colonies, prompting us to consider how humans came to shape their world and ideologies around the mining of minerals. Salvation Mountain surfaces the contradictions of a capitalist society, and in particular the phenomenon of the Silicon Gold Rush which has impacted the Bay Area for the last several decades. Liu intersects footage of ungovernable sites in California with tales and aspirations of currency creation and the human faith in objects, posing the question: In the age of late capitalism, how does one achieve absolute freedom? Salvation Mountain explores the contradictions of capitalist society and in particular the Bay Area, as history repeats itself with the Silicon Gold Rush becoming at once a global site of innovation and high technology and simultaneously one of severe poverty, inequality, and with some of the poorest public infrastructures in the country.
Liu Yu has developed a multifaceted artistic practice that takes field documentation as its point of departure. Liu’s work employs human perspectives, spatial disruptions, and the fluidity of an object’s identity within systems to portray the trajectory of human evolution. Liu’s practice references a variety of visual languages through a series of approaches that include texts, publications, documentary images that imitate films, and the collection of vast amounts of onsite field research and reference materials. Through these methods and materials, Liu explores the possibilities of rearranging diverse modes of communication, integrating the fragments of spaces, histories, images, and narratives by connecting subjects and reframing them with new information.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Shi Guowei
Through a hand-painting process, Shi Guowei created Manufactured Landscape ...
© » 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...
© » TWOCOATSOFPAINT
Mary Jones: Layered histories – Two Coats of Paint Mary Jones, American Interior 2023, oil on digitally printed canvas, 52 x 38 inches Contributed by Katy Crowe / “Significant Properties,” the title of Mary Jones’s current exhibition at as-is.la and her first in Los Angeles in some years, aptly suggests real estate worth seeing...
© » KADIST
Paz Errázuriz
1986La manzana de Adán (La Palmera, Santiago) by Paz Errázuriz is part of the celebrated series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s apple) that spans 5 years (1982-1987) of documenting the lives of transgender sex workers in La Jaula and La Palmera brothels in the Chilean cities of Talca and Santiago...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Gloomy outlook for Vietnamese cinema, literature scene: workshop (via Tuoi Tre News) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo: Tuoi Tre December 27, 2018 Attendees at a national workshop held in Hanoi on Wednesday to discuss the multitude of issues plaguing the Vietnamese film and literature industries were not shy about voicing disdain for the current state of literary and cinematic art in Vietnam...
© » ACAW
ACAW 2017 | Press Coverage - Asia Contemporary Art Week Asia Contemporary Art Week ABOUT Consortium Partners PRESENTED ARTISTS FIELD MEETING ABOUT FIELD MEETING TAKE 6: THINKING COLLECTIONS (2018) TAKE 5: THINKING PROJECTS (2017) TAKE 4: THINKING PRACTICE (2016) TAKE 3: THINKING PERFORMANCE (2015) TAKE 2: AN AFTERTHOUGHT (2015) TAKE 1: CRITICAL OF THE FUTURE (2014) FIELD REVIEW ABOUT FIELD REVIEW ISSUE 1: SOUTH ASIA ISSUE 2: MIDDLE EAST PAST EDITIONS ACAW 2002 – 2018 PRESENTED ARTISTS PRESS PRESS RELEASES PRESS COVERAGE Announcements ACAW 2017 | Press Coverage ACAW 2017 FIELD MEETING forum & ACAW THINKING PROJECTS Pop-up Exhibitions Coverage OCULA,”ACAW FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Projects” Tianyuan Deng, Novmber 10, 2017 “While bringing Asian practitioners from the ‘periphery’ to the ‘centre’ remains a consistent feature of ACAW’s signature forum, this year’s iteration built upon its previous rejections of Euro-American-centric triumphalism.” > View as a PDF ArtAsiaPacific,”A Bite of Everywhere: Song Dong’s Eating The City” Mimi Wong, Novmber 8, 2017 “For Song, eating signifies life itself.” > View as a PDF Hyperallergic,”Mining Mineral Structures with Watercolor and Sediment” Barbara Pollack, Novmber 6, 2017 “Mineral geometries and natural forms inspire delicate artworks with fractal patterns and meticulous details.” > View as a PDF ArtAsiaPacific,”Yu Fan” Mimi Wong, 2017 “The ceramics on show were drawn from a set of 80 hand-sized sculptures, collectively known as Gifts, made during the artist’s month-long residency this year at the School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston.” > View as a PDF ArtAsiaPacific,”ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK FIELD MEETING: THINKING PROJECTS” Tausif Noor, November 3, 2017 “…Asia Contemporary Art Week’s Field Meeting convened to address the bounds and possibilities of the “project,” a concept that has become increasingly popular in artistic practice.” > View as a PDF China Daily USA,”Festival fosters youth cultural exchanges- food meets art” Zhang Ruian, October 24, 2017 “‘Eating is a very important part of Chinese culture,’ said Song.” > View as a PDF Arte Fuse, “Re-Thinking Home: ACAW’s THINKING PROJECTS Pop Up at C24 Gallery” Audra Lambert, October 23, 2017 “ Thinking Projects Pop Up at C24 gallery can seem at first glance to be an expedition: before you, wonders of the world are arrayed in complex congurations.” > View as a PDF Art Radar,”Highlights from Asia Contemporary Art Week 2017 in New York” Junni Chen, October 18, 2017 “Asia Contemporary Art Week pulls together some of New York’s biggest museums, galleries, and institutions to shine the spotlight on visual arts from Asia.” > View as a PDF BLOUIN ARTINFO, “Guo Hongwei & Judy Blum-Reddy at Chambers Fine Art, New York” BLOUIN ARTINFO, October 13, 2017 “It is basically a pop-up exhibition series presenting research-based, ongoing artistic endeavors by nine noted artists from China, Indonesia, Turkey, India, and the Us.” > View as a PDF Ocula, “An Introduction to FIELD MEETING Take 5: THINKING PROJECTS, New York” October 6, 2017 “…FIELD MEETING presentations traverse between disciplines of visual arts, art history, science, social history […] to relect on a variety of significant and timely topics.” >View as a PDF State of the Arts NYC, “Radio Interview with Leeza Ahmady” With host Savona Bailey-McClain, September 22, 2017 > View as a PDF Taipei Cultural Center, “Two Taiwan Artists to Present New Projects at ACAW FIELD MEETING Oct...
© » ART CENTRON
Recovered Van Gogh Masterpiece Takes the Spotlight Again - Artcentron Home » Recovered Van Gogh Masterpiece Takes the Spotlight Again ART Feb 10, 2024 Ξ Leave a comment Recovered Van Gogh Masterpiece Takes the Spotlight Again posted by ARTCENTRON Vincent van Gogh, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884)...
© » KADIST
Alejandro Almanza Pereda
2015This still life falls apart, or rather floats apart as the composition is proved unstable and constantly morphing...
© » SLASH PARIS
Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Previous Next Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes Exhibition Mixed media Vue de l’exposition Cruciformes — Hommage à Vera Molnar , MAC VAL 2024 Photo © Aurélien Mole Hommage à Vera Molnar Cruciformes Ends in about 2 months: January 5 → April 8, 2024 Le 5 janvier 2024, Vera Molnar aurait eu cent ans...
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Why these ephemeral clay artworks by ceramicist Ruth Ju-shih Li will crumble in front of your eyes | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Art + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Taiwanese-Australian ceramicist Ruth Ju-shih Li installs an ephemeral clay artwork at the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, in Taiwan, in 2019...
© » KADIST
Park Chan-Kyong
2019Park Chan-Kyong’s otherworldly film Belated Bosal primarily follows two women as they navigate their way up a spectral mountain and through what appears to be a history museum or nuclear disaster bunker...
© » SLASH PARIS
Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Précédent Suivant Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes Exposition Techniques mixtes Vue de l’exposition Cruciformes — Hommage à Vera Molnar , MAC VAL 2024 Photo © Aurélien Mole Hommage à Vera Molnar Cruciformes Encore environ 2 mois : 5 janvier → 8 avril 2024 Le 5 janvier 2024, Vera Molnar aurait eu cent ans...
© » KADIST
Guadalupe Rosales
202290022 (Leonard Ave) by Guadalupe Rosales engages with memory, loss, grief, and nostalgia; themes that run throughout the artist’s practice...
© » KADIST
Proyecciones Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia) y Museo La Tertulia (Cali, Colombia) ¿Cómo enfrentamos la incertidumbre de estos tiempos? ¿Puede el juego, los sueños, o incluso las alucinaciones ayudarnos a imaginar otras posibles trayectorias? ¿Qué tipo de prácticas nos permiten relacionarnos con los territorios que habitamos? Tomando como punto de partida el potencial de lo inquietante en medio de una amenaza invisible, Sigo esperando es una serie de proyecciones en las fachadas del Espacio Odeón (Bogotá) y del Museo La Tertulia (Cali)...