In this four-channel 10 min video installation different episodes play simultaneously on the four screens. The artist has arranged several different scenarios and symbolic props which make it easy for viewers to feel the pervasive ambiguity which cannot be put into words. On the one hand, our imagination is tempted by the delicate details, but on the other hand, our imagination is limited through a very rigorous structure.
The black-and-white photograph Men (055, 065) (2012) depicts two similarly built young men – young and slim, with dark tousled hair and a square jaw line – seated aside one another in identical outfits. It is unclear if these subjects are related, despite the obvious doubling of visual cues, and Lassry offers few hints to suggest that these men have any association beyond their sitting for the same picture. By extension, Lassry subverts conventions in portrait photography by identifying his subjects with numbers, erasing the familiarity inherent in the act of naming, Men (055, 065) functions as an anti-portrait in which anonymity supplants intimacy.
The four-channel video installation Same Old Crowd departs from the documentation of an unknown city and takes place in an ambiguous temporal and spatial frame. Twelve characters (amateur actors hired by the artist) appear in black-and-white in highly stylized surroundings wearing patterned cloths. The identities or time period of the characters, all deprived of languages, are impossible to determine.
Pioneer of video art in China, Zhu Jia’s works have often dealt with ‘realness’ and everyday life, though often in unconventional ways...