Digital c type print on metallic paper with diasec framing
MindSetArtCenter is proud to present “Away from the Long Night” from the 5th to 31st of December, 2014, as a year-end exhibition endued with warmth, hope and inspirations. The exhibition will show works by 4 outstanding artists, Shi Jin-Hua, Song Dong, Yee I-Lann and Yin Xiuzhen, each sets off from his or her own creative context and probes into the relationship between individual and society nowadays. During the exhibition, artist Shi Jin-Hua will give a talk entitled “Scale of a Common Mortal- Relative Measurement” on 13 December afternoon at 3 pm. You are cordially invited to attend the exhibition and artist talk.
Shi’s work has always related to “measurement” and “body” closely. Through the performance of his body, the artist measures the world with scales of his own definition as a common mortal. Hugging Project, in which friendship and people’s encounters are the subjects being measured was created during the artist’s residency at MoMA PS1 inNew York during 2003-04. The transnational friendship between Shi as an individual and his fellow artists also implicates the diplomatic isolation and unique situation of Taiwan.
Performance as a form of self-cultivation also plays a major part in Song Dong’s work. Writing Time with Water: Beijing is a reflection on the nature of time, in which Song wrote down the time of the moment in a Hutong with brush and water as an attempt to capture the essence of time. As time passed, the written words evaporated into the air and a response to the Taoism philosophy was thus created.
The idea of body language finds perfect personification in I-Lann’s ongoing series about embraces – the arms, the only clearly visible form in the artwork, literally spell out a phrase. While Chapter 1 of this series The Sun Will Rise in the East and Deliver Us from This Long Night (2012) is currently on show at the Singapore Art Museum’s exhibition “AfterImage”, Chapter 2 In the dark dark heavy dark night I was listening to the secret sounds of the earth and I heard you and your sweat became that of fear didn't it in the dark dark heavy dark will be presented in “Away from the Long Night”.
The employment of used clothes has become a distinct feature of Yin Xiuzhen’s work, which often questions the fast development of contemporary China. In her work Bookshelf No.22, wood blocks are covered with used clothes and placed on a shelf also covered by fabric to imitate books on a shelf. Through a seemly simple manner, Yin created a sculptural work in which the lofty knowledge system is replaced with articles for daily use, and thus endued with warmth and emotion.
