After Nature

Exhibition Dates: 2018.10.13 – 2019.04.07

Exhibition Venue: UCCA Dune, Aranya Gold Coast

Artists: Li Shan, Liang Shaoji, Liu Yujia, Nabuqi, Yang Xinguang, Trevor Yeung, Yu Ji, Zheng Bo, Zhuang Hui & Dan’er

 

As biotechnology matures, making deeper interventions into nature, and as ecological crises become more and more common, this exhibition attempts to reinstate a fluid relationship between nature and technology. The exhibition presents a group of artists of different backgrounds, who express individual—or epochal—ways of understanding and being with nature, as well as the deep ethical concerns underlying these relations.

 

Image: Zhuang Hui & Dan’er, Leftover material from the Carpenters, 2009, resin, acrylic, variable dimension

 

Usually when people make use of certain material, they would often take what’s useful to them, and discard the “useless” part. In other words, people are inclined to abstract value from their limited experience while overlook to make the “useless” space useful. Our recent work Leftover material from the Carpenters are replicas of 27 pieces of leftover bits and pieces by carpenters. They are pieces molded with clay and then casted with fiberglass into 5 times of their original size. Then the replicas were coated in acrylic to mimic the original texture of the wood. These “useless” trimmings were cut off in unique shapes depending on requirements for their “useful” counterparts, moreover, the writ large sculptures thus offer the audience a new perspective on viewing objects.

 

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