47H x 31W inches
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. The title alludes to the Pre-Raphaelite notion of a brotherhood based on “truth to nature.” Censorship of the mouth and indigestion of freshly cut stalks, central to Chen’s language of tree branches, feeds back provocatively to the title’s suggestion of “state terrorism.” However, one must resist seeking symbolic meaning in the image as Chen’s focus is on the direct visual impact of the absurd act portrayed.
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.
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...
Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled...
Three men with their backs to each other, dressed similarly in dark colors, stare straight at the camera...
Zhang Wenzhi – ARTOMITY 藝源 Tiger in Mountains, Deer at Ocean / Blindspot Gallery / Hong Kong / Nov 28, 2023 – Jan 13, 2024 / Tiger in Mountains, Deer at Ocean , curated by Leo Li Chen at Blindspot Gallery, focuses on Zhang Wenzhi’s latest series of works, primarily consisting of large-format ink-on-paper pieces, accompanied by a video...
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...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
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...
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...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
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...
Phinthong made four photographs depicting fragments of meteorites of which the faces have been polished to reflect the sky...