Mirrors, lights, and family furnishings converge on a grand scale within the luminous installations of Music Dong. The Chinese language artist’s interdisciplinary observe usually combines efficiency, sculpture, portray, video, and calligraphy to summon reminiscences and create monumental immersive experiences.
Themes of transition and ephemerality usually seem in Music’s items, like a sequence of installations and performances through which tabletop constructions paying homage to metropolitan skylines have been constructed from edible treats, dismantled brick by brick—or biscuit by biscuit—as guests handed by. Playful and saccharine on the floor, these works look at the artist’s personal childhood experiences of meals shortage together with themes of ephemerality and globalization.
“Waste Not” —which was proven initially at Beijing Tokyo Artwork Tasks earlier than being exhibited in main establishments within the U.S., U.Ok., Australia, and Germany—explores associated themes of consumption and impermanence. Incorporating greater than 10,000 objects his mom had amassed over the course of 5 a long time, the installation-performance turned “an act of physical and psychological unpacking,” says Tempo Gallery, which represents the artist. Viewers have been introduced with “a veritable landscape of commodities, ranging from bottle caps, shoes, blankets, toothpaste tubes, metal pots, and toys.”
Via the usage of outdated wood home windows, mattress frames, doorways, mirrors, lamps, color-coated glass, porcelain, and different discovered objects and “daily necessities,” Music composes elaborate, structural installations. These evoke dreamy notions of house, belonging, safety, and migration whereas exploring the relationships between reminiscence and truth, humor and trauma. He culls his supplies from the streets of Beijing, sourcing discarded furnishings, architectural parts, and quotidian objects.
“These collaged remnants of people’s homes carry with them the history of a city and the lives of its people,” Tempo says. “As viewers are invited to peek inside, they are transformed into voyeurs: imagining their homes, their stories, and perhaps identifying shared experiences, and primed to think of the future.”
Now on view as a part of the colourful thirty sixth São Paolo Biennial, Music’s work seems amongst formidable installations by dozens of artists from world wide. His commissioned piece “Borrow Light” takes the type of a mirrored world brimming with lamps that mirror from each floor, not not like one in every of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms.
The artist considers the idea of “borrowing” by way of its inherent temporality. He positions it as one thing of an ethos for understanding our brief time on Earth, whether or not life’s cycles and even the presence of people at all around the course of hundreds of thousands of evolutionary years.
Music attracts inspiration “from both a carnival’s house of mirrors and the traditional Chinese feng shui method of using mirrors and windows to expand interior space by ushering in the external world,” says an exhibition assertion. “Borrow Light” turns into a participatory expertise, the place guests’ actions are mirrored and illuminated all through the area. Chairs and lamps, all lent from non-public properties, present locations for relaxation and contemplation.
“Playing with fluid elements such as light, reflection, and illusion, Song’s installation immerses the audience into an infinite universe, where our images and minds become entwined in a silvery, glowing light,” the biennial says.
Discover extra exhibitions and be taught concerning the artist on Tempo Gallery’s web site.
