Absurdistan

: Artist Statements

February 23rd, 2013 - April 4th, 2013

Ang Sookoon: Your Love Is Like A Chunk of Gold (Seminola), bread, monoammonium phosphate, 30 x 20 x 15 cm, 2011

“Your Love Is Like A Chunk of Gold” is a series of bread with crystal growth. The work is a juxtaposition of the real, the supernatural and science fiction.

The bread is a familiar item, a comfort food; the spiky crystal (instead of mold) growth made it strange and treacherous — the bread with crystal growth becomes an oxymoron object of familiarity and strangeness, comfort and pain similar to experiences of love and romance.

“The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely."

Jeanette Winterson

Chen Xi: Jet Turtle, Chinese ink, 32.6 x 70.6 cm, 2012

My works often acts as a metaphor for some kind of limited physical reality and through them I try to discover the humor and quirky ways for us to endure an incomprehensible environment that is beyond human control.

By careful selection of detail, I can build my own fictional movie-like scenes inside my works in which narratives are more likely lead to an obfuscation of meaning.

There is free association of visual elements and an exploration of the symbolic capacity of objects (such as high-tech products, tanks and aircraft) or well-know cultural products (such as Snow White, Batman and Little Mermaid). Yet my individual vision doesn't imply a clear critique of how we think and how we understand the world.

Leung Chi Wo: Leung Chi Wo, Sign HDV, PAL, English subtitles, 13 min, 2008

“Sign” is a 2-part video work by Leung Chi Wo exploring the idea of non-mainstream communication and the meaning of human reality overloaded by mass media.

“Part I” is an educational video featuring deaf teacher Laisarn (Laisarn Leong) and her shadow (Belle Reily) about the idea of baby signs in Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and the demonstration of basic signs with which parents can actually learn to communicate with their children whether they be deaf or hearing-enabled. Whereas Laisarn communicates with the audience in Auslan, her shadow does it with her eyes and mind.

“Part II” is a fictional video showing a young mother in communication with her baby in Auslan. Though the scene takes place in a peaceful and pleasant atmosphere, the mother tries to convey the words that she comes across every day, which can be harsh or discomforting. The juxtaposition of loving expression and hostile meaning depicts a surrealistic scene of our schizophrenic world. The vocabulary here is chosen from The Canberra Times.

Qian Rong: ink, pen and water color on paper, 38 x 38 cm, 2010

“History Book”: History is always written by the people who succeed it. It reflects their needs and motives. In light of this there is one sentence that I find really powerful: “All of history is contemporary history”! History is demolished, written and reborn in the books — the wheel then comes full circle.

“The Dialogue of the Empire” carries the weight of the many literati who were helpless and terrified. After they were tried, they became part of this dialogue and took on a different appearance. Proud and self-invented, they made a lot of noise but no one thought it was heartfelt.

“Dragon’s Roar”: Dragons are always a symbol of empire, on the other hand the human spirit also is coming into existence, starting to break forth. Free thinking, human spirits are like birds spreading their wings. The Image of big dragon producing a loud roar, was part of the backdrop of the intellectuals of the empire.
“China Ship Building”: The power of the empire also touches on the area of ship building. Huge and sincere, a simple exterior, but there are many hints of its self-confidence — monstrous and tyrannical. But no matter what, this boat can steer mankind towards a civilized sea.

 
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