Dilemma, three way of fork in the road
2007 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Jianwei Wang
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text. The performance begins with two broad-knife-wielding characters circling each other in conventional operatic steps. Oblivious to the presence of these two on stage, additional characters, in a mix of period costume and contemporary dress, enter the stage in increasing droves to consume a various of foods laid out on a table until they collapse and pile on top of each other. Invoking the traditional Chinese theatrical trope of a “three-way fork in the road,” the piece ruminates on the representation of the visible and the invisible and the simultaneity of past and present as critical reflection on the shortcomings of both antiquarianism and technocratic modernity.
Born in Sichuan Province, China in 1958, Wang Jianwei was trained as a painter at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (current China Academy of Fine Arts) in Hangzhou. Despite displaying technical virtuosity as a painter, Wang chose a working method that combines video, film and theater. Interested in combining the mundane, the historical, and the mythological, Wang’s works range from depicting the “plight of peasants occupying an abandoned housing project in Sichuan Province to films of post-1949 China during the height of Communist fervor and stories from the Tang Dynasty.” Particularly, poignant is the cognitive dissonance formed between presentations of the past and present in Wang’s work.
Colors:
Other related works, blended automatically
© » KADIST
Lin Yilin
Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...
© » KADIST
Lu Chunsheng
2004A 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...
© » KADIST
Zhang Peili
2008In 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...
© » KADIST
Du Zhenjun
2010The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
© » KADIST
Allan McCollum
1982In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
© » KADIST
Du Zhenjun
2010The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
© » KADIST
Pak Sheung Chuen
2017The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...
© » KADIST
Mark Bradford
2012This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
© » KADIST
Mateo Lopez
2012With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
© » KADIST
Du Zhenjun
2010The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
© » KADIST
Xiaoyun Chen
2006State 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...
© » KADIST
Jiang Pengyi
2008Unregistered 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...
