The magazine project is the extension of photography project that is exploring the interesting and challenging way of looking, I try to add another medium - oil painting to intrude the photography and words of one magazine, thus making original photographs produce different possibilities of meaning by viewers' curiosity. To some extent, the concept of John Stezaker is similar with this project, but by different way to give the original pictures new meanings. Unlike Stezaker, his work combines two pictures to create a new picture, my work combines two different mediums – picture and acrylic blue painting, opening up new characters, relationships and meanings. What’s more, I think, probably his work more relates to the old time but mine is concentrated to different uncertain possibilities of the future. But the same thing of us is that we try to intrude the photograph to produce new meaning by different ways. Just as he mentioned, ‘You can only get a feeling of the inviolable purity and sanctity of the emulsion of a photograph by violating it.’ In this project I think I am a conceptual structralist, try to say to the viewers ‘this is not that’ in terms of the original pictures and words of the magazine, thus making the overpaintings thought-provoking, aesthetically pleasing and utterly desirable.
2. Brutality Project
After
doing the photography project and magazine project, I think the color of blue
is going to be my personal symbol. In other words, the blue oil color is
like my personal logo. Then I do my final project ‘Brutality’, about ‘the
value of discarded things’. This project expresses three cycles – from high
price to free, life to death and redesigned artworks to discarded things,
overall, it is about the value of different situations of staff. It tries to evolve, surprise and
question the audience and the art world in this commercial society. To a large extent this project is about
examining concepts of ‘value’ in our culture and re-investing discarded, old,
vintage things with meaning and use. I’m trying to point viewers’
attention to specific objects and events in life that risk being overlooked as being
too quotidian or too common. I also think art making is less about the
invention or construction of new things, but more about the close paying
attention to existing things. The abandoned things made by any human
beings have witnessed the passage of time. Giving these wasted old things
a new life is a kind of return, as well as a kind of expectation to the nice
time of the future.
Using
normal materials to make a creation is not a new concept, but the reasonable
application could make it outstanding at the aspects of innovation and
quality. In the final show I will
set up a shop named ‘Brutality’ to sale these ‘redesigned products’ and
randomly price them with very high price. On the other hand, the shop will sell these things from 10% OFF to 100% OFF during the
9-day of final show in order to show the life-cycle of the product or the
artwork. And meanwhile, it will encourage viewers to think about the real
value of packaged products and how we value things.
In
this project, I do hundreds of objects and entirely enjoy doing that. But the problem comes towards the
display of the final show. I try
to put all of them to the small exhibition space and undoubtedly the effect is
totally messy, even making the concept confused. After discussing with three tutors I begin to give up
something gradually. David
suggests me that sometimes I must display the most important and typical things
instead of all of them in order to make the space more free and comfortable, thus
the viewers will be very pleasure when they see the show, and meanwhile more
concentrating on the concept. Then I try my best to remove parts of the stuff
and adjust again and again, the effect is evidently much better than before and
the concept is much clearer. And
this process of adjustment is pleasure and I have learned so much through
it. David and Sigune also suggest
me to reduce the concept of ‘sale’, but I still want to keep it, because it is
my original aim of this project, which is the one and only thing that I need to
insist on.
3. Video Project
In retrospect, the video project work with Sunday from project of Sequential Images and Narrative
Structures is my first promising work. I make up
the story in the project of “Words are unreliable”. Both of us like the story
very much that we would like to realize it in a narrative video. It talks about
a mental patient who has a split personality fell in love with the other person
in his body. ‘Jessica’ is the split character that lives in his own body. But
he fell in love with Jessica, which means he fell in love with himself. This is
a tragedy that the story ends up in the death of Jessica because he wanted to
process the entire love from his lover. That is to say, he killed himself. In
fact, he loved nobody but himself. Sunday and I try to separate this story into several short videos
presenting the different mental situations of the character. The first video
was displayed in the Public Screening in Sigune’s studio in November 2011. We
especially chose a bus stop to shoot this short video, as there is a glass
mirror that can shows reflections. And this reflection can connect with the screening
window of the studio. The second one is made February 2012, talking about the
chasing of the Jessica, though it is just an illusion in his mind. But I feel quite ashamed that the third and fourth one is not strong as the
former ones. Anyway, it is quite
happy work together with Sunday (I am director and actor, Sunday is
photographer and film editor) and we have learned from each other so much.
