INSTALLATION | VIDEO

2021

Mirage

2021
sound installation (audio, 28:56 min) and wallpaper, dimensions variable


Script for Mirage (English with Chinese translation): Download PDF

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Walter Benjamin’s research work The Arcades Project and Emile Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise portray the world of department stores and luxury goods full of temptations. Since their emergence in the 19th century, they have become an indispensable component of consumer culture.
The audio piece Mirage that surrounds the gallery space brings these two literary works together, along with quotes from a contemporary visual merchandising guide. With a massive wall paper showing the image of the historical front gate of the German department store KaDeWe, the exhibition constructs a ‘consumer temple’. The interchanging black and white light gives the room an illusory atmosphere, revealing the ‘second face’ of these paintings, while visualizing the temptation the store environment generates on a psychological level.

INSTALLATION | VIDEO

2019

Scylla – A Fragment

2019
single-channel-video (HD, color, sound)
16:42

Vimeo password: whitespace

 

The video Scylla – A Fragment is a multi-layered montage that combines storytelling with the abstract camouflage of the Armada paintings. Moving detail shots from the painting series appear next to virtual sky and seascapes, artificial thunder from screen-savers and sleep videos, as well as original historical footage from World War II.

A computer-generated voice reads out excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey, featuring Odysseus’s son Telemachos, the Spartan King Menelaos, the nymph Circe who warns Odysseus of the monster Scylla – and finally, Odysseus’ tragic encounter with the monster itself. Recorded details from the Armada
paintings merge dynamically with film documents from 1941, where a clash between the legendary British battleship Hood and the German Bismarck led to a military catastrophe and the eventual destruction of both ships.
Tragedy, heroism, and the aesthetics of violence and victory are present in both this WWII episode and Homer’s myth. Scylla becomes an emblem for death and destruction — an abstract monster whose uncontrollable dynamic is portrayed in the dynamised painterly abstraction and distortion of this moving collage, while the camera “flies” across the canvas as if mapping an imaginary topography.

Along with the Armada series, this video wants to reflect on the technoaesthetics of war machines and their representation. It revolves around the question how such an event in history or mythology can be restaged — the narration is balanced between persuasive pathos and the weirdly detached, profane technological tools of today.

INSTALLATION | VIDEO

2016

Watchman

2016
acrylic glass, aluminum, digital print on transparent foil
191,5 x 128 x 55 cm x 4
installation includes: tripod, flashlight, motor

installation view: “Our Painting”, Yang Art Museum, Beijing, 2016

PAINTINGINSTALLATION | VIDEO

2016

King of My Castle

2016
cord, nails, acrylic, spray paint, tape, oil crayon, marker, black light
overall dimensions variable

installation view: solo exhibition “The Grand Illusion”, White Space Beijing, 2016-17

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