Beijing artist Yu Honglei’s work is generally derived from the everyday objects in his life, redefined through his unique vision, and presented with new identities and functions. Yu’s new project at Telescope seeks the middle ground between conception and realization of art objects. Telescope becomes a window into his art studio and his working process where everything is in flux: full of the possibilities for transcendence as well as failure. Where does art begin and end?
Artists often work in obscurity in the studio creating artwork that will later be seen by the public in a different setting, usually a gallery or museum space. Even though the work can make this transition successfully it is still somewhat out of context and is perhaps even altered during the process to accommodate its future environment and life. Often times the art market pressures are also a determining factor in an artists art production. Of course, there are many factors that come into play when artists create, that’s life. Yu incorporates Telescope’s mission and purpose to offer a place where artists can rethink their lives and what they make without the usual overt manipulations whether by exterior forces or even self imposed calculations to achieve and reveal unexpected results. His exhibition Sketch is an artwork and at the same time it is not. Yu has moved pieces and moments of his art making process in his studio into a non-profit exhibition space. Pieces of unfinished sculptures are shrouded in sheets like furniture in an abandoned mansion. Materials accumulated over time that can be found in almost any artist’s studio stand in as sculptures themselves. Photos of his studio show fractured scenes of his ongoing process of collecting, thinking, and assembling. Sealed crates perhaps containing ‘finished’ art works lie silent on the floor waiting to be shipped. Maybe some of these objects have become finished pieces by changing their context? Maybe they are just the pedestals or frames that present art or the ideas of art? We don’t know and it is not important to figure that out. Sketch lies somewhere in-between all of these notions. What you can see is an installation that offers another way of experiencing art; to see the beginning, the process, and possibly the end all at the same time, but never really know where we are standing on that timeline.
