When: Aug 29,
2015 - Oct 25, 2015
Galerie Urs
Meile Beijing is delighted to announce the opening of artist Yan Xing’s latest
exhibition, Thief. This exhibition will feature a series of new works in a
variety of different media, including installation, video, photography, space,
and design. The works explore negativity, resistance, and order in many layers
throughout the process of artistic language.
The Story
of Shame (2015) is about a secret collection of ‘shames’ (ignominy, cowardice,
shyness, disgrace, etc.). Brought to the fore is shame’s implicit tendency to
be “anti-expressive.” One piece is hidden in the corner. One work is obscured
by another. A photograph is stretched out in the room’s crevices. The pieces
are about sex and shame. If we think of art as a metaphorical machine, these
negative, downward, and tragic features are the machine’s lubricant.
Looking
back at his past artistic practice, Yan Xing has appropriated Western classics
more than once. The reconstruction of legitimacy has often been the common denominator
of his artistic language. Failure, punishment, and discipline—these are the
topics explored in the video Thief (2015). When people deviate from social
norms, their actions are punished. A failed jump highlights physical
inabilities, the act of theft is ridiculed through legalistic scorn, and
discipline is described through an adolescent’s sexual awakening and
repression. This new video reconstructs the categories of expression through a
new series of pieces about the origins of dreams, sexual textures, habitual
behavior, exceptional behavior etc.. At the same time, the video is
interspersed with segments of boys experiencing confusion upon entering
adolescence. The artist redistributes images in a logical place within the
artistic language of the work. Reviewing this universal, human, experiential
history allows a re-examination of the assumptions and definitions regarding
the ‘legitimacy’ of the thief.
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