Photography (Photography)

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment. Referring to China’s modernization and its capitalist and utopic visions, RMB City explores the ways in which global communication impacts imagination, values, and ways of life. By appropriating virtual reality, Cao Fei opens up a new frontier in the field of art production that surpasses conventional materiality and invites collaboration and exchanges with her public and clients.

Installation (Installation)

Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner. Its tiled effect can perhaps be seen as a vertical Carl Andre work and also bears some resemblance to another work in the Kadist Collection, Jedediah Caesar’s JCA-25-SC. McGee’s installation also echoes the votive altars in the chapels he visited during his residency in Brazil in 1993.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Cao Fei’s video La Town, 2014 depicts a mythical metropolis that has been destroyed by unknown forces. Although the damage is obvious, as the camera navigates across the elaborate, handmade dioramas, the inhabitants of La Town carry on with their activities and the normality of everyday life pervades. As the film progresses, the latent chaos and violence begin to emanate from every corner of the miniature city: a bloody briefcase left on the ground, a kidnapping scene, an axe murderer on the loose, a ferocious man-eating octopus—all rendering the darkness of this new post-apocalyptic world order.

Photography (Photography)

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004. In Cosplayers Cao Fei depicts the popularity among Asian youths of “cosplay” in which daily life is merged with images of video games and popular films. For many, this virtual reality is an outlet to “transcend” the paradox of a developing society in which the pleasures of consumption and depression of alienation go hand-in-hand.