Lin Tianmiao at Long March Space
Monday, July 21st, 2008
Long March Space
Lin Tianmiao Mother’s!!! No. 12 (detail) 2008
Courtesy: The artist and Long March Space, Beijing
Lin Tianmiao
Mother’s!!!
July 26 - August 24, 2008
Long March Space, Beijing
Long March Space will showcase new explorations by artist Lin Tianmiao in ‘Mother’s!!!’, an immersive experience that will see the gallery space completely transformed.
Over the past 2 years, Lin Tianmiao’s practice has turned towards the small and intimate, having previously experimented with various large-scale installation and print based media. The diminutive works presented in ‘Mother’s!!!’ maintain important qualities from her previous works — such as her use of material, form and color — however the relationship between these elements have been significantly altered in terms of how these aspects can articulate a particularly different, at times violent, bodily existence.
The white, voluptuous figures of middle-aged women, whose heads have been removed, or remain abstract and devoid of human features, have been placed in deliberately ambiguous postures. The surface of these bodies are delicately wrapped in a pearl-like material, these figures at times placed in private remonstrations suggesting the expelling of bodily waste, or seemingly pulled apart and laid bare, the innards of the body transformed into ominous balls and threads which suggest an interconnected relationship with the animal and plant world. The boundaries between people and their surroundings; male and female; internal and external; between different types of species, are blurred and broken, creating a chaotic environment which questions the nature of the world it inhabits.
The exhibition title, Mother’s!!!, carries the idea of ‘mother’ and maternal instinct, seeking to express the “yin” (Chinese philosophical principle) and feminine characteristics of people and things. ‘Mother’s!!!’ also recalls the process of raising a child. The apostrophe in the title references material possession and ownership, alluding to ideas of familial inheritance and a continued human story. However, the title of this exhibition also holds a contradiction in that in Chinese slang “Ma de (Mother’s)” is a swear word, and thus this language holds a deliberately chosen derogatory overtone. This subtle ambiguity presents the viewer with a particular platform for interpretation.
The strange “landscapes”, created by these disconcerting sculptures, recall those kinds of images discussed by Jacques Lacan and his materialization of “imago”, whereby form takes shape in the imagination’s intermingling of time and space, fundamentally enabled through psychoanalytic recognition. It is the contradictions within these deep psychological states and processes that Lin Tianmiao addresses the relationship between body and mind, society and the natural world, ethics and material value, and reason and emotion – all interminably linked to the idea of middle age and womanhood.
‘Mother’s!!!’ will be the most significant solo exhibition of this important female artist to date, whose pioneering role in the development of contemporary Chinese art has been hugely influential. This exhibition celebrates the culmination of a long period of labor-intensive work, employing an imaginative intuition to realize an exhibition stage that ‘wraps’ the floor, ceiling and walls of the gallery space to create the experience of a cave, or the inside of a living organism. Here, the process of ‘viewing’ becomes another kind of aggressive act, entering into a personal and private confrontation of existence.
Lin TIanmiao was born in Shanxi Province, China in 1961. Beginning as a textile designer in New York in the early 1990s, she returned to Beijing in 1995 and has since been recognized as one of China’s most esteemed female contemporary artists. Working across installation, sculpture, photography, works on paper and video, Lin Tianmiao’s work has been included in numerous local and international exhibitions, such as: Focus: Works on Paper, Long March Space, Beijing, China, 2008; Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA, 2007; About Beauty, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany, 2005; Mahjong: Works from the Sigg Collection, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland, 2005; Between Past and Future, International Center of Photography, New York, USA; Asia Society Museum, New York, USA; Smart Museum, Chicago, USA, 2004.
Long March Space
4 Jiuxianqiao Rd (Factory 798)
Beijing China 100015
Tues-Sun 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
http://www.longmarchspace.com
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