After more than two years of discussion and preparation, from Shanghai Chongming to Kailash in Tibet, 20,000 kilometers, climbing 5,300 meters, spanning 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the "Rong-Yuan" space art exhibition recently opened at the Powerlong Art Museum in Shanghai. Most of the exhibitions are composed of space and material works, and all the components and equipment of the works exceed more than 10,000 pieces. The 9 major sections are distributed in 7 major spaces, in order of viewing order, "Overture - Misty Forest", "Pillar of Light", "Wings of the Wind", "Tea Room of Light", "Melter of Light", "Raindrops", "Computing Power Light shadow", "Epilogue - Cave of Light", and "Tidbits".
The best way to feel about a space art exhibition is to be "on the spot". Overture – The Misty Forest is a space constructed of the reverberations of light. The illusory and hidden misty landscape places the viewer in it into a poetic living space. The work's labyrinth-like and elusive features hint at some of the vanity of human life today.
Pillars of Light chronicles the refraction and disappearance of ice cubes, and the work accomplishes a seemingly futile feat: the artist takes fifteen cans of river water from Wusongkou and freezes them into huge three-sided icicles, transports them from Shanghai to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and brings the ice to Kailash. He also took water from the Ma Pan Yong Cuo Sacred Lake in Taqin and brought it back to Shanghai to freeze into icicles, so that the water of Taqin was irrigated on the land at the mouth of the Chongming Yangtze River. It explores the relationship between existence and time by recording the refractive light and disappearance of ice cubes in specific fields.
"Wings of the Wind" records the data of the wind and converts it into the kinetic energy of the on-site mechanical device after it has been calculated, so that the light changes freely with the rhythm. It uses contemporary technology to convey to the world the mysterious and beautiful customs of Tibet: whenever the strong wind blows and the prayer flag is raised, it is a blessing.
The main body of the work "Tea Room of Light" is composed of more than 5,000 full bowls, and the main creative artist Bai Shui pours great affection into it. "Its bubble structure is full on the outside and empty on the inside, and the concept of wisdom in traditional Chinese philosophy is 'emptiness is fullness, fullness is emptiness'." The light white veil surrounds the stable dome space of the main body of the work, and when you step into it, the top of the tea room transmits images of the sky from Kailash in real time, and the space barrier is eliminated by technology, and the two places across thousands of miles can be "co-located". The work combines tea drinking and contemporary aesthetics, using the language of the moment to redefine the humanistic spirit of the East.
The "Fusion of Light" around the "Tea Room of Light" contains two sub-series: "Melter" and "Melting Sound". The highlight of The Melter, Blades of Grass, is a tribute to the nameless and feeble forces around us. The creators collected a lot of unknown dry grass before the cold winter came, took photos and recorded, and then used high-temperature glass melt to freeze the life of the four-dimensional space into two-and-a-half-dimensional light and shadow, and left traces of life for the nameless weeds that were about to disappear through the transformation of materials, just like some chapters in the long river of time, unheard of but indeed true. "Fusion Sound" collects sounds and pictures collected from the plateau, hoping to put these traces of life into a display cabinet. The work is a careful feeling of animism, and the inner and outer are integrated with an idyllic mind.
On the surface, the installation "Raindrops" only places 9 large and small glass raindrops in a space of about 160 square meters, but most of the glass raindrops are not less than the height of adults. The originally tiny rain became a behemoth here. When the scale of the existing impression of things changes, people's original cognition will have a huge contrast.
"Computing Power Light and Shadow" is an intelligent interactive work, which uses pictures taken in the Ali area and Shanghai in August 2021, and calculates the noise capture at the exhibition site in real time, making the picture unpredictable. Every interaction between the viewer and the work affects the evolution of the program's operations. It is a reminder of our current social behavior and external nature.
Glacial caves are natural landscapes in geological processes that have always changed with the Earth's climate, and this change is also affected by human behavior. The installation "Cave of Light" simulates the cave space by capturing the number of people walking in real time to change the light color. It is a hint of the interaction between man and nature.
"Art is not the product of hindsight, but a witness and reflection on the times after the precipitation of time." Curator Zhang Zikang believes that the relationship between human civilization and the natural world is presented in the form of visual art, and "RONG-source" reflects the artist's exploration of the integration of art and science and technology, which also constitutes the effectiveness, experimentation, effectiveness and forward-looking of the exhibition. The theme of the exhibition, "RONG", can be understood as "melting", "dissolving", "melting", and can also be understood as "Rong" or "Rong"... However, the organizer did not directly give specific Chinese characters, but wanted to leave the initiative of interpretation to the audience.
Author: Li Ting
Editor: Xu Luming
Editor-in-Charge: Xuanjing
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