Shi Jinsong “Art Fair: Free Download”
Klein Sun Gallery
This event has ended.
Klein Sun Gallery is pleased to present Shi Jinsong’s Art Fair - Free Download a solo exhibition of new sculpture, painting, and digital work.
Shi Jinsong’s Art Fair - Free Download boldly parodies art consumption at the massive supermarket-like art fairs held annually in dozens of cities internationally. Through interactive bronze and wooden mobiles, free digital downloads, sculptural furniture and tools, paintings, hand crafted color pigments, and extravagant Chinese knock-offs of Harley Davidson motorcycles, Shi Jinsong extends the boundaries of artistic creation while mocking and reflecting the current state of art collection. The exhibition is held in conjunction with Shi Jinsong’s Art Fair, a project that began earlier this year, in which the artist has organized several exhibitions of his work in the fashion of an art fair.
The interactive mobile, Suspension Strategy, is suspended throughout the length of the gallery and created from tree branches found in New York and Connecticut, as well as cast bronze models of Chinese tree branches. The beauty of the mobile lies in the whimsical and precarious feeling conveyed by the swaying and floating objects freed from a grounded trunk. Strings hanging down from the ceiling allow viewers to manipulate the mobile themselves and create a sense of free flowing movement.
As the work is made from branches, a similar mobile can be designed by anyone following simple instructions. With this in mind, Shi Jinsong has uploaded the instructions detailing how to make a Suspension Strategy mobile online for free download. Shi Jinsong will even provide approved works with a certificate of authenticity. Through encouraging viewers to create their own Suspension Strategy mobile, Shi hopes to challenge the paradigm of collecting artwork, question long-held perceptions about intellectual property rights, and bring his creativity to a new and much larger audience.
The sculptural works belonging to the Huashan Project series are commonplace items that have been transformed into contemporary pieces engaging in a dialogue with traditional Chinese aesthetics. Copper tables and chairs, which are exhibited as if they were paintings, exaggerate and play with the simplistic and elegant lines that define Chinese visions of the world. Tools that are redesigned to be beautiful, but which are occasionally rendered useless, emphasize that Shi Jinsong’s vision is that of an artist’s imaginative recreation of our utilitarian reality. The Huashan Project series breathes new life into traditional Chinese aesthetics and highlights Shi Jinsong’s artistic vision.
Media
Schedule
from January 15, 2015 to February 28, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-01-15 from 18:00 to 20:00