Aike Gallery - Galleria dell'Arco Shanghai is pleased to announce the group exhibition 'There is nothing you can measure anymore', by artists Maya Kramer, Jin Shan and Ni Youyu, opening saturday september 10 at 5 pm.
We live in a system built of so-called standards and regulations. However, when these regulations and standards cannot offer effective solutions, or when the system is not able to justify its own failure, we cannot help asking ourselves, what kind of system do we rely on ?
Ni Youyu, an artist who is fascinated by traditional Chinese landscape paintings, has been longing for that sort of mindset and approach to artistic creation. In his installation, he created his own artificial mountains and lakes inside a wooden cabinet. By translating the installation into an oil on canvas, he shifts his focus from the artwork itself to its former experimental stage.
Another example is Jin Shan’s Roman pillar. As an expression of Shanghai’s colonial background, reproductions of Roman pillars engulf the urban landscape of this city, and in the process of duplication and localization, different styles are clumsily modified by local manufacturers. According to Jin Shan, this localization reflects what we have experienced during globalization and the influence on our daily life. A breathing pillar lying on the ground and an exploding chapiter frozen inside a glass cube become both symbols of our alienated life.
However, is there really such a standard out there ? Maya Kramer’s work may provide us with one version. Atiger skull, made from laundry detergent is placed in a one way mirrored vitrine with blacklights. A drip system inside the vitrine, drips water so that over the course of the exhibition the tiger skull will disintegrate. This confluence of materiality and imagery relate to environmental damage, but also reinforce how entropy and destruction are natural forces.
Maybe the real standard only exists beyond the world that we consider we can control and measure.