Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shaun Leonardo uses his own body to communicate and portray imagery. In his film Bull in the Ring , hyper-masculine images of physicality are staged at the expense of his own physical comfort. The function of the male body has long been a signifier of self-worth and the body affirms and legitimizes feelings of control and agency over environment.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Four knives appearing as if thrown at the wall to alleviate frustration and boredom, form rhythmic shadows and markings of time above a translated phrase boldly printed in simplified Chinese and English. While the English reads “But Now I Manufacture Hate, Every Single Day,” the Chinese, resultant from Google Translate in 2011, reads awkwardly to something meaning “now I manufacture black special.” The term “black special” is derived from a transliteration of the word “hate” into the sound “heite”, where the corresponding written characters literally denote “black special”. The rigidity of the machine translation also preserved the syntax of English, forcing the Chinese to crudely abide by English grammar.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle. As suggested by the work’s title, each of the hands assumes a character with a distinct personality, as if we were witnessing a lovers’ quarrel and embrace, or the embodiment of opposing forces of an internal struggle. Gordon has previously created performance-based works depicting his own body or parts of it—arms, hands, fingers, eyes—usually enacting simple, repetitive movements.