Title: Headwaters
Artist: Li Binyuan
Opening: 2015.08.22 4:00pm
Duration: 2015.08.22-10.04
To watch the video preview, please click here.
Headwaters, Li Binyuan’s second solo exhibition in Gallery Yang, is set to open on August 22nd, 2015. It will last until October 4th. His first one, I Have Issues, came to Gallery Yang two years ago, which multifacetedly and enumeratively represented part of his early works in three forms, that is, installation, video, and image. Now in Headwaters, Gallery Yang systematically hackled and classified his works over the time of almost 5 years to demonstrate his compositions in a deeper and subtler way, ending up with a selection of only 7 documentary videos and 2 sets of documentary images, both of performance art.
We try to cooperate with the artist to organize the threads of his work onto such directions as “counter-action”, “body sculpture”, “recasting of space/ reconstruction of matter”, “accidental encounter”, and “natural symbiosis”. The description and classification, however, were not intended to put emphasis on these conceptions, but to bring out some angles from which his artistic composition could be interpreted and discussed. The waters in the nature all have their specific origins. By way of searching for the origin of Li Binyuan’s work, we set up a sightseeing route in spacial language, making use of the connections between his works. The hometown he was born to, the places he lived and worked, the places oversea he visited, and the behaviors generated in varying natural and social environments, all these seem to point to a original base. “Body” is an element Li Binyuan frequently employed, which is environmentally friendly and natural. Quietly, fanatically, riskily, earnestly, physically exhaustedly, and repetitively, he communicated with himself and his surroundings. Plant as You Wish, a work in this exhibition, presents an attempt to face his father and home for the first time after years of lacking courage to touch. The setting we devised for this work is similar to that of his visit in reality, and when viewers walked in or out, their footsteps will be left on the paths between works in the exhibition. In Testing, the artist experienced a dialogue with danger. In the meantime, the office area of Gallery Yang will make its debut as a part of an exhibition, open-armed, greeting the public.
