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FIRST EXHIBITION FROM SKY SCREEN
25 APRIL – 30 JUNE 2012
AES+F – KFNY
Jiang Zhi – Post Pause – courtesy of the dslcollection
AES+F – Le Roi des Aulnes
Tracey Moffatt – Other
Cao Fei – Rabid Dog – courtesy of the dslcollection
Hye Rim Lee – Obsession: Love Forever
Sumugan Sivanesan – Children’s Book of War
The inaugural SKY SCREEN program touches down in Moscow with AES+F, launches you down under with Tracey Moffatt and Sumugan Sivanesan, flies you through Korea and New York with Hye Rim Lee, and unleashes the best of contemporary Chinese art with Cao Fei and Jiang Zhi from the DSL Collection.
AES+F
King of the Forest, KFNY
2003, Video, 11:01 min
King of the Forest, Le Roi des Aulnes
2001, Video, 9:07 min
The King of the Forest – is a mythological creature of medieval Europe. He kidnaps beautiful children and keeps them in his palace. The subject of that myth was used by many writers, such as J-W. Goethe and Michele Tournier, for instance. The circle of projects «The King of the Forest» – is series of performances in different countries (Russia, Egypt, USA, etc.) …The mass media image of humankind became younger and younger last decade. The teens from Calvin Klein’s advertising, models, and pop stars, who starts the carriers from childhood, young heroes of tennis – all the media world at the beginning of the new millennium is unusually young and sometimes extremely young. The project of AES+F group concerns the theme of contemporary children’s corporations, modified by the human civilization of the 3rd millennium using new, just technological methods. The other aspect of our interest – the body in architecture and nature. But the body with smaller scale and other proportions in most monumental architectural space.
The first project of the circle – «Le Roi des Aulnes» (a novel by Michael Tournier) was shot in the palace of Catherine the Second in Tsarskoye Selo (St.-Petersburg). It concerns the theme of the corporate identity of professional children from the ballet sport and the media industry. For the first performance, we chose more than a hundred pupils of the special ballet and sports schools and some children from model agencies from St.-Petersburg, all of them from 3,5 to 11 years old. We did not ask the children for special poses, but they behaved themselves in front of the camera as well as experienced media stars from cover stories. The third part of the cycle – «King of the Forest: New York» was done in New York in 2003. There were around one hundred kids from Ford Models, who posed on «Military Island» on Times Square – one of the most significant places in the United States (or even in the world) in sense of mass media.
Jiang Zhi
Post Pause
2004, Video, 10 mins
Courtesy of the dslcollection
“Paused moments of city life in Shenzhen. Faces and faces of twisted bodies humanity line up the streets and bridges of the city mark the cost of desires and consumerism in our contemporary culture. A Kafkaesque dreamscape of labyrinths and maze.”
…”In Shenzhen, the rapidly evolving city where I currently live, there is perhaps the highest proportion of dreamers in the whole country. Many came penniless and destitute, having brought with them only the determination to savagely scrape together a fast buck in a few short years. As the Deng Xiaoping saying goes: “The most virtuous ethic is the virtue to pursue development.” At any moment, the dreamers are ready to bring their dreams to fruition, and apparently willing to do so for any price.”… “In the city streets, I might encounter many strange and wonderful things. Those people we see are like actors on a stage. Those sets and scenes look no different from a directed play in progress. It was only much later that I become conscious of the fact that this is the reality in its true form. That one individual with that group of people over there, with the motions they are acting out, are all controlled by a hand. This may originate from organizational leaders behind the scene, their bosses, their husbands, mistresses, or perhaps it might be the factory, the company, or even these people themselves… However, I am only directing a small segment in this short film. I would like to suggest this is a response to the issues brought forth by the characters. In those embarrassing realities yet to receive people’s attention there is also the fantasy world that we are so insistently infatuated with – only when I can examine these two worlds in parallel may the prying curiosity in me be satisfied.”
Jiang Zhi was born in Yuanjiang, Hunan in 1971. Graduated from the China Academy of Fine Art in 1995, now he is living and working in Shenzhen and Beijing, China. Jiang Zhi’s works concern contemporary social reality in China. His works have an insight into human civilization and China society, bringing the public introspection in an amusing form.
Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hilberg video collaboration
Other
2009, Video, 7 min
Momentum Special Edition, Edition of V
OTHER is a fast paced montage of film clips depicting attraction between races. Marlon Brando looks at Tahitian girls and Samantha from Sex and the City ogles an African American football player in the men’s locker room. Seven minutes of gazing and touching and exploding volcanoes. Very funny, very hot.
Tracey Moffatt is amongst Australia’s leading artists, returning there recently after having been based in NY for many years. Her practice encompasses photography, film, and video, with works that that address gender, race, social issues through artifice and humor.
Cao Fei
Rabid Dogs
2002, Video, 8 min
Courtesy of the dslcollection
“We love whips; we need to bite; we dare not bark. We work tamely, faithfully, and patiently like dogs. We can be summoned or dismissed at the bidding of our master and understand his intentions clearly at once. We are surely a miserable pack of dogs and we are willing to act as beasts that are locked in the trap of modernization. When will we be daring enough to bite our master, to take off the masks, to strip off the furs and be a real pack of rabid dogs?”
Cao Fei (1978) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. She is known for her multimedia installations and videos and is acknowledged as one of the key artists of a new generation emerging from Mainland China. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Her recent project RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche Guggenheim (2010)，Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), Yokohama Triennale (2008). I. Mirror by China Tracy, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Chinese Pavilion; RMB CITY- A Second Life City Planning has been exhibited in Istanbul Biennale (2007); Whose Utopia, TATE Liverpool (2007), Nu Project, Lyon Biennale (2007). Cao Fei also participated in 17th & 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006/2010), Moscow Biennale (2005), Shanghai Biennale (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She also exhibited video works in Guggenheim Museum (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), MoMA (New York), P.S.1 (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musee d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). And Cao Fei is the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010, and won The 2006 Best Young Artist Award by CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award ).
Hye Rim Lee
Obsession / Love Forever
Eight individual High Definition 3D Animation Pieces with Sound, Looped DVD
(Shown above in a standard definition, single-channel viewing copy), 2007, Looped
One edition of each, out of an edition of five
Hye Rim Lee is a Korean born artist who now lives and works in New York, Auckland, and Seoul. In the title of the project, Obsession is named after a perfume by Calvin Klein, and love and forever are common words/themes for perfumes. Touching on the humorous or surreal, the works have significantly steered clear of clichés of the psychological definition of obsession; rather they explore the theme with a mixture of seriousness and delicacy.
The project aspires to come to terms with our contemporary vision of beauty by examining the crossover between the fashion industry’s construction of norms and the contemporary myth created in computer gaming and cyberculture. In the age of computers, online games, and the internet, digitalization, and computerization have changed our environment, our viewing habits, modes of perception, and fashion in contemporary pop culture. Digital technology and scientific progress have tried to create the absolute perfect vocabulary of beauty. The project seeks to investigate ideas about the relationship between beauty, perfection, and technological progress.
Sumugan Sivanesan
A Children’s Book of War
2010, Video animation with an accompanying text
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist. Often working collaboratively, his practice is concerned with histories of anti-colonialism and transcultural exchange.
A Children’s Book of War discusses legacies of colonial violence in contemporary Australia within the context of the current War on Terror, the law and contesting sovereignties.