Totem Producing is the artist’s ideas about ‘object’, production and the spiritual image of ‘object’. Shao Yi uses realistic rules and materials that generated by ‘object’ and ‘reality’ as the production source and place them into his symbolized system. At the same time, he sets requirements for distillation and transformation.
Totem is an imaginary image that produced to meet people’s need for spiritual materialized symbol and hope. This image as a carrier of ideology and realistic rules, often presents certain richness. However, Shao Yi’s totems comes from his sensibility and imagination of ‘human producing objects’. These objects which house the nature of reality may be the products of industrial civilization, or certain damaged material form that have been produced by accident. Or it might even be his original ‘form’. However, the emerging aesthetics, after spiritual transformation, are being continuously extracted during the producing process. These ‘human producing objects’, possessing the characteristic of totem, have abundant values in terms of aesthetics and texture, which can reinforce and strengthen the ‘object’ by converting the production.
Shao Yi was born in Hangzhou in 1967, he lives and works in Hangzhou and Shanghai now. His recent exhibitions include: Time of the Dragon – Contemporary Art from Shanghai, Rauma Art Museum, Finland (2012); Pulse Reaction, An Exchange Project on Art Practice, Times Museum, Guangdong (2012); Elementary Spectacle – Exhibition with Shi Qing & Shao Yi, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2010); Bourgeoisified Proletariat, Contemporary Art Exhibition in Songjiang, Songjiang Creative Studio, Shanghai (2009); Light Fogging – Shao Yi Solo Exhibition, BizArt, Shanghai (2008).
