Sculpture (Sculpture)

Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain. Because individual movement through the maze echoes the movement of neurons and a larger aggregated whole, visitors can be seen to enact a model of sociality and public space that both embodies and metaphorizes social consciousness. Capote’s model shows not just the proposed structure, but features figurines as well, to illustrate the possible scale and interactivity of the final piece.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel. In the video, a fallen parachutist hangs tangled by his own lines, suspended between two electrical towers in a surreally desolate landscape of overgrown fields in the Jordan Valley of Israel. A group of over a hundred men and women approach the towers, working with almost mechanic efficiency to free the parachutist from the power lines overhead.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach. The video produces a surreal impression, typical of Sala’s work, with no plot in the classical sense, no story being told. Like in Blindfold (2002), in which a sunrise is reflected in urban billboards, and Time After Time (2001), in which the figure of a horse emerges from darkness lit by the headlights of an automobile, Sala likes to explore the phenomenon of light and its effects; In Ghost Games , he uses the threatening reflection of the flash light through the darkness of the beach.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment. Chen Xiaoyun has added a written narrative and a poetic quality to his works. Image fragments containing different pieces of information are linked together by the text, their interplay producing a synesthesia effect.

Photography (Photography)

The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction. Chen emphasizes the direct sensational impact of his work to allow his viewer to question the boundary between reality and art. The image of nails as food harks at a visceral relationship with the title, which cries the tone of a manifesto.

Photography (Photography)

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. Near his studio, Chen often walks over fallen branches in late autumn and sense their existence. Thus, his placing them in diverse contexts builds a “narrative Ariadne’s thread” where the branches become “the language of things” intertextually cohering his oeuvre.

Photography (Photography)

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.

Installation (Installation)

Ongoing Time Stabbed with a Dagger was Farmer’s first kinetic sculpture that added a cinematic character to an “ever-reconfiguring play presented in real time.” The assembly of various objects and props on top of a large platform constitutes not only a work, but, to a certain extent, a show in itself. The title of the piece comes from the literal translation of René Magritte’s painting from 1938, La Durée Poignardée , whose more familiar translation is “Time Transfixed.”

Film & Video (Film & Video)

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.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

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. Interiors of a Victorian doll’s house, a rippled seascape, a palm tree forest, and a gravel seashore are superimposed, morphing into each other. The hermetic narrative is charged with psychological and mythological aspects.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

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. Intrigued by the accidental preservation of historical building material by renovations and rebuilding, Wong began paying attention to the experience conveyed by layered forms accreted to affect the visual historicity of a space. The geometric forms in the piece are welded together as a composite replica of a metal grate from a children’s playground next to Wong’s studio, a security grate door from his apartment complex, and the latticework that holds an air conditioner from an electronic store, and a front grate from an elementary school on his bus route.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Reborn, 2010 is a three-channel video by Desiree Holman that questions ideas of motherhood and the maternal instinct. The video features a group of women as they tenderly cradle lifelike baby dolls atop their rocking chairs. Although at first, the video might appear as a celebration of the maternal bond, the scene soon becomes eerie and unsettling as we see milk spilling out of the mothers’ mouths.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself. What appears at first sight to be a not unusual performance of self-choreography, becomes at a second glance a disturbing portrait of a – female – persona brought to life under contemporary conditions of attractiveness, anxiety and narcissism. Unlike her previous works, which duel more on the internal, surrealistic human conditions, this seven-channel work elevates the individual relationship with its socio-political environment to a more recognizable and appealing set of behavioral actions of self-awareness and self-inflicted anguish.

Photography (Photography)

Em’kal Eyongakpa was born in Cameroon in 1981. After obtaining a postgraduate diploma in Botany and Ecology, he decided to concentrate exclusively on visual and sound art. His use of poetic, symbolic and surrealistic imagery is often sprinkled with paradoxes that challenge the obvious.

Photography (Photography)

Em’kal Eyongakpa was born in Cameroon in 1981. After obtaining a postgraduate diploma in Botany and Ecology, he decided to concentrate exclusively on visual and sound art. His use of poetic, symbolic and surrealistic imagery is often sprinkled with paradoxes that challenge the obvious.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. This drawing uses a pink form on which an inmate can list telephone contacts for approval. The drawing depicts two uniformed figures, with backwards feet, berating a figure on a toilet.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. The form used for this drawing details a weekly menu for the prisoners. Hough’s drawing depicts three grimacing figures, riding atop the back of a larger, female figure on all fours.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. The form used for this drawing is a request for medical attention. This work illustrates an assembly-line of severed bodies being pumped full of feet and other body parts.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Invalid Throne by Jakrawal Nilthamrong is a 35mm film that searches the protagonist Kamjorn Sankwan’s memory and connection with the land he grew up in. Using Nithamrong’s cinematic language of visual representations and soundscapes without narration, he highlights a non-human-centered view to meditate upon and reveal the sublime and unspoiled natural landscape ? as Nilthamrong states: “in the middle of nature where no man has claimed ownership”.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The film Man and Gravity follows the journey of a man in an old, beaten motorcycle, struggling to transport his possessions through a mountainous landscape. At times riding swiftly and at times caught in a bind, we witness the man fighting against gravity and the roughness and irregularity of the terrain. The film draws on the artist’s own Buddhist beliefs, referencing the writings of ascetic Thai philosopher Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who uses the concept of gravity as a metaphor for karma and destiny.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

A moonscape is a vista of the lunar landscape or a visual representation of this, such as in a painting. The term “moonscape” is also sometimes used metaphorically for an area devastated by war. Moonscape by Mona Benyamin is inspired by and dedicated to the Lunar Embassy—a company that now sells land on a variety of planets and moons, established in 1980 by a man called Dennis M. Hope, who claimed ownership of the Moon.

Performance (Performance)

During the performance A Hand’s Turn visitors are invited to read a text: “I hold a pen with the right hand / move the mouse with the right hand” reads one excerpt. While reading through the instructions the performer’s hands go through a precise choreography. The performance lasts 30 minutes and includes only 2 people at a time.