4:11 minutes
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.
Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In “And so it is” shows the image of a faceless man before a microphone, ready to deliver an important message...
The sculpture And Shadows Will Follow is an angle piece that articulates a space since its appearance highly changes depending on the point of view...