The Third Seal-They Are Already Old, They Don't Need to Exist Anymore
2009 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Tsang Kin-Wah
The Third Seal—They Are Already Old. They Don’t Need To Exist Anymore is part of The Seven Seals , Tsang’s ongoing series of digital videos that are projected as installations onto the walls and ceilings of dark rooms. Using texts and computer technology, the series draws its reference from various sources—the Bible, Judeo-Christian eschatology, existentialism, metaphysics, politics, among others—to articulate the world’s complexity and the dilemmas that people face while approaching “the end of the world.” The Third Seal is a nineteen-by-twenty-seven-foot projection on a single wall that, together with sound, creates an immersive and dynamic environment. Crawling up from the bottom of the wall are black, worm-like texts that comment on class struggle, revolutionary riots, labor and production, human existence, and social justice. Without a clear beginning or end, the work suggests a cycle and the non-linear nature of history, and, by extension, life and death.
Navigating relationships among words, images, and languages, Tsang Kin-Wah’s text-based work span various media: wall prints, silkscreen, and digital video projections. His wallpaper prints usually feature beautiful floral patterns that recall the swirls of nineteenth-century decorative wallpapers. However, upon closer inspection, details reveal the patterns to be composed of text in both English and Chinese characters. Their provocative and sometimes offensive meanings mock art, the art market, the artist and his Chinese ethnicity, as well as other broader culture issues. In 2009, Tsang began experimenting with new media and produced The Seven Seals , an ongoing series of digital video installation works that takes its name from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. Tsang’s practice allows a range of interpretations and encourages viewers to search the relationship between image and text, between pictographic and phonetic writing systems.
Colors:
Related works featuring themes of: » China, » Collective History, » Color Photography, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Chinese
© » 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
Adrian Wong
2012Untitled (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...
© » KADIST
Xiaoyun Chen
2006The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
© » KADIST
Yang Xinguang
2009Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...
© » KADIST
Hank Willis Thomas
2012Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...
© » KADIST
Qing Zhang
2006603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...
© » KADIST
Hank Willis Thomas
2012Like many of his other sculptural works, the source of I am the Greatest is actually a historical photograph of an identical button pin from the 1960s...
© » 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
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
Hank Willis Thomas
2014South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
© » KADIST
Chen Shaoxiong
2007After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
