randian | 燃点

［Press Release]

projects from six Xi’an-based artists; the works share the same focus on difference of awareness through seeing and hearing. These are based on the artists’ various life experience, perspectives, theories and social interest. From simply scavenging images, or reusing and repositioning symbols, the artists turn the discussion to the relation between the two acts of seeing and hearing.

The project is based on a “story” originating from the meaning of the story itself. Generally, the gulf between the present and the past is bridged through the interpretation and repetition of story-telling, without which the past may be lost in time forever. The six artists intervene in the “story” that takes place around them using different new media to stimulate audiovisual senses, and evoke a strong sense of reality arising from the plot. With such “intervention”, the artists develop a rhetorical means of story-telling rather than merely listing the images and symbols of real objects. As author García-Márquez mentions to Mendoza in El Olor de la Guayaba, most of writers tend to list images in their writing, which ultimately lack more in-depth observation or insight. Only Graham Greene offered an accurate solution for this literary issue, making a careful selection of seemingly unrelated materials that, in an objective way, are closely connected with each other. In that way, the mystery of the tropics can be distilled into the fragrance of decayed.

In this project, the artists evoke the images of a story rather than list them with media. Specifically, to evoke an unpredictable future from true facts, to construct the unknown from the known, to capture the strong sense of abstraction from concrete images, this project consists of two parts “Seeing” and “Hearing”, which indicates our audiovisual senses. In “Seeing”, we present the photography works of Wang Gang and Zhang Haoye together with Hu Muxin’s three-screen video installation Everybody Be Ready All Time. Those works based on realistic representations of fact reveal something unrelated to reality. For “Hearing”, as the title implies, “sound” is the key element of the works. Lu Yi’s work takes the form of personal monologue records concerning the paradox of recordings, texts and videos. The works of Liu Qin explore the concepts of message and language through their research on lives of the hearing-impaired. Cui Kaimin simply magnifies the physical property of sound while getting rid of unnecessary sentiments. It seems that the “sound” in these works forms a wave churning the simulacrum of the Ganges, invoking an imagination that there’s a world within each countless grain of sand in the Ganges.

OCAT Xi’an would like to thank VART online platform, who made the audio guide system for the exhibition.

About the Artists

Cui Kaimin was born in Xianyang, Shaanxi in 1988. He graduated from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 with a BA; he is completing a masters’ degree in Motion Picture Photography and Animation Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. Currently he lives and works in Xi’an and Shanghai.

Hu Muxin was born in Hefei, Anhui in 1990. He graduated from Motion Picture Photography and Animation Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2014 with a BA. Currently he is completing a masters’ degree within the same field.

Liu Qin was born in Hunan in 1995. She graduated from Motion Picture Photography and Animation Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2016 with a BA. Currently she is completing a masters’ degree within the same field.

Lu Yi was born in Wuhan in 1994. She graduated from Motion Picture Photography and Animation Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2016 with a BA. Currently she is completing a masters’ degree within the same field; and working and living in Xi’an and Wuhan.

Wang Gang was born in 1986. He graduated from Chinese Painting Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2010; currently he is completing a masters’ degree in Motion Picture Photography and Animation Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts.

Zhang Haoye was born in Shanbei in 1986. He was learning art as a child; in 2004 to 2012, he was working and living Beijing, after that, he return to Xi’an to continue his work of art.