Monday, April 20, 2009

recycled materials

Hello, everyone. Today I wanna have a talk to discuss my previous works and most recent works. I simply summarize all those works into three categories: paper works, recycling material works and previous works. From early on, I am fascinated with geometric forms and material's properties. My preference and understanding of geometric forms roots from my preliminary art training and my personally rational thinking. You will see, among all my works, I attempt to explore as many types of media as possible to broaden my understanding of each material's chacteristics and its capability of the art expression. Recently, I swtich my early interests, focusing on architectural form and its relationship with the environment, to emphasises of the relationships among cultures, personal lives and modern societies.

Let's begin with the first part of this talk: paper and cardboard works.


In our house we ordered many magazines and newspapers. They piled up day by day. One day, I picked up a piece of paper from a magazine. I tried to create a Origami bird. I was fascinated by this simple structure. So I assembled many birds together into a complicated form as above.


I did more practices with the paper. In this work, I disassembled a magazine into many small pieces, then organized them into a simple form with abundant colors and textures, which representing the diversity in modern society.
Does the bubble wrap look like poodle's fur? It's called Bubble Wrap Poodle. One may find some ironic air in this work, especially when you touch the curving surface.

Made in China. It's about the disappearance of the traditional culture in the modern commercial life. The pottery is one of the most common commodities in ancient China. I am using cardboard to make those ancient potteries, which styles originated from Ming and Qing dynasties. These potteries represent the essence of the Chinese culture. I cut the cardboard into many circles with different radius and stack them up into a shape of a pottery. But the contour is rugged because of the texture of the cardboard and finite layers, which symbolize digitalization of the modern life. Though cardboard is a recycling material, it’s interesting to turn the waste into a treasure. I believe we could always look back and find some valuable experience in history, even though it has already elapsed.



Handwriting is a one of important cultures in China and Chinese Character "Hanzi" is the fundamental element in Chinese cultures. I am attempting to resemble Chinese calligraphy into a 3d structural form by using cardboards.








imprints

The second part of my talk is about print works.




This is called Memory. When I got this idea, just right after I had a baby and my life was changed a lot. I couldn't help thinking about many things of my family before I went to bed at night. Then I had an idea about making a pillow with print, which is an materialization process of keeping one's memory on a pillow.






I magnified keys of the computer keyboard and with my hand print on it. I made the moulds and vacuum-formed them into plastic key board. Hand print on the keyboard represents that the handmade had been replaced by the mass production. Keyboard stands for the contemporary life style. Moreover, hand print represents the nature and personality. But the nature has outdated, just like the memory, which is blurred and difficult to be recognized in the modern life. The personality has been erased in the mass production, whose products are all same.

early works

This is one of my early works contructed from three acrylic circles. I glued the these circles into a 3d sculpture. I was interested in the relationship between the base and sculpture body connection.


This idea came from a foundation of Architecture. I used a pyramidal mirror to reflect the ground so it looked to be lifted.


I name this work "the window and the wall". I made a positive piece and a negative piece to represent a realistic world and a psylogical world. It's one of the works for my graduation show. And at that time I felt it's hard to see the future.



This work is called "Practice". The book is the theory, and the nails means practice. It is a perfect combination of the the theoretic knowledge and the practical knoweledge. I was also interested in the shape of the book, in which the lines and words look abstract.
The spine leaning to a chair.

Friday, August 29, 2008

back from SFMOMA this summer

I'm really pleased to see China's new art on display in SFMOMA at the time when Olympic game began. We know it's a good chance to let the world know more about today's China. Actually I have seen most of these works in China several years ago. But I still felt some disappointed for this show because most of the wokes vilified the Chinese at this time.


Saturday, July 12, 2008

Gallery

http://www.cccgallery.org/

Friday, May 16, 2008

Louise Bourgeois----Fabric works




Fabric Installations

I just found an interesting website about fabric installation and something in there maybe is related to what I'm going to do. http://www.audart.com/circus/fabric.htm