Organized by the K11 Art Foundation (KAF) and curated by the international contemporary art magazine ArtReview, BREAKING THE WAVES WAS RECENTLY EXHIBITED AT THE CHI K11 ART MUSEUM IN SHANGHAI. "Breaking the Waves" brings together the works of 14 artists (groups) from all over the world, and the meaning of "Breaking the Waves" has many interpretations, which is the continuous perseverance of the waves lapping at the coast, and it is also the action of going up against the current and breaking out of the air. It seeks to convey a spirit of optimism in the present – that we should have faith in new potential as we gradually enter a reshaped post-PANDEMIC world.
View of the exhibition "BREAKING THE WAVES"
Each work is exhibited in a form of "dialogue" to highlight the communication and mutual influence between the artists. The artist's work moves between work and play in the exhibition, covering topics ranging from the relationship between humans and nature, the conditions of migration and mobility, exploitation and cooperation, the potential of new technologies, and the way in which artists collaborate or dialogue with their peers – whatever the barriers they face.
The exhibition attempts to show how art offers us a new or alternative perspective on the world and positions itself in it.
Founded in 2017, Slime Engine is a Shanghai-based artist group co-curated by Li Hanwei (top left), Liu Shuzhen (top right), Fang Yang (bottom left) and Kindness (bottom right), dedicated to developing unprecedented forms of work creation, exhibition planning and viewing methods. Their work has been exhibited in China and other countries, including the New Timeline Media (CAC) Art Center in Shanghai (2020), the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (2020), the Rhode Island Academy of Art Gallery (2019), and the Wenzhou Pavilion of the Hao Art Museum (2019).
In this exhibition, the artist group Slime Engine from Shanghai brings a work called Ocean. Ocean is a first-person art experience game developed by Slime Engines in collaboration with more than 100 artists. "In the work 'Ocean', the collaborating artists also come from all over the world, which is very much in line with the theme core of the whole exhibition that wants to present 'world connection'." Fang Yang said.
Slime Engine "Ocean"
The slime engine takes full advantage of the omnipotence of virtual space, gathering hundreds of artists at a time to place their works on the vast "sea" of smoke. In this digital, endless, virtual ocean, we see that every work of art floats in the form of an "island", oil painting or animation, sculpture or 3D model... Those works that are difficult to coexist in the traditional offline art space, spanning several artistic dimensions, appear together on the endless sea, they stand quietly in the middle of the sea, slowly swaying with the ups and downs of virtual waves, quietly waiting for us.
Ocean
"'Ocean' is not only presenting the ideas of artists, but also reflecting people's current living conditions like walking on thin ice." In the view of slime engines, "breaking the waves" has a special meaning at present, "after human beings have experienced the ravages of the global epidemic, people should embrace a 'ride the wind and waves' mentality." "Players can pick up the handles and soar through the vast ocean to navigate these works of art and experience the shocking audiovisual experience of contemporary art. At this time, the game is an "exhibition" in an exhibition and a "portal" for a digital art museum.
The art world has always been dominated by traditional art. But in recent years, we've seen a growing new generation of artists changing in response to the new era. Founded in 2017, Slime Engine is created by Li Hanwei, Liu Shuzhen, Fang Yang and Shan Shan, four young "post-95s" artists who love photography, design and animation, who use digital technology as a medium and theme to create digital art works that subvert what we see in the traditional "white box". Instead of seeing the Internet as a replacement for physical institutions, slime engines see it as a platform with digital and virtual media features that are almost replicable in the real world. They have developed concrete imaginations about the possibilities of exhibition production and the expectations of online and offline participation of art audiences. Slime Engine has long been committed to the exploration of digital space, trying to create a new exhibition model that surpasses any existing exhibition.
Slime engine x ding force
"Slime Engine", a name that sounds a little special and slightly interesting, artists seem to have their own interpretation, "'Slime' is a kind of clay without limitations, implying the shapeability of art, not limited to a specific form, it can freely create, mix, mix all kinds of different elements, materials, just as artists work, mixing materials from different artists' works together to create a completely new work." And their work is as all-encompassing as a 'search engine', as accelerating innovation as a 'game engine'. Lee Explained. In his view, the role of art itself is to create new things and break down inherent ideas. "We want to break through this limitation and show more possibilities in art with the help of virtual spaces that are not limited by time and space."
"Distance Sensing"
Traditional art spaces, whether presented online or offline, are designed to set off the artistic bit, while the space constructed by the slime engine is directly involved in the creation of artists, and this "two-way interaction" forms a symbiotic relationship between artwork and space. As an online platform organization, Slime Engine is good at collecting art, interspersing and placing it in daily experience. Based on the parody and reconstruction of existing realities, they create new realities with an integrated collage aesthetic, and in this way provide critical feedback on the structure and order of the current world.
They try to break out of the limitations of art museums and try to find a balance between the online space of the Internet and the traditional "white box space". Whether they are leading a new artistic trend or not, they don't care, they care more about the process of slow accumulation and precipitation, each work can lay the mark of the unique style of "slime engine".
Jurassic
In the slime engine's public account, several online art exhibitions have been released, and art lovers can freely traverse in virtual psychedelic scenes, from the cyber city of "Teleportation" to the primeval jungle of "Jurassic"; from the strange crypt of "Hole" to the vast universe of "Space Station"... Art seems to grow savagely in space, and space has become the most spectacular work of art that we can see, and this wonderful blend brings a dream-like look and feel, which is extremely addictive.
《Territory》 - Yi Chengtao 《XXX stands on the earth》
Slime Engine's work is mostly based on film classics, but also often features dystopian scenes and a whole-of-a-kind futuristic fabrication/test lab. They use 3D modeling software to build the scene, and then cooperate with different 3D software to achieve the desired effect. City towers, ocean abysses, roller coasters and desert islands... Will become the scene of the work. When asked where the inspiration came from, they joked: "Anything has the potential to be our creative inspiration." ”
Among the art fans who love slime engine works, the younger generation of the post-90s and 00s in first-tier cities accounts for the vast majority. The game-like online space they have built uses a language system that is most familiar to contemporary people, and the audience can easily grasp the rules of operation and participate in it. "Compared with the traditional cold physical art space, these Generation Z young people are very keen to participate in the interaction of online exhibitions through mobile phones, and to appreciate art from a different perspective through the visual presentation of games." Previous generations might have thought that this form of artistic presentation was very ingenious and reflective, but for our generation of young people, these forms are all too familiar to see every day. Lee Added.
During the epidemic, the advantages of "more convenient" online exhibitions compared to physical exhibitions are obvious, but not all physical exhibitions are suitable for reproducing offline exhibitions online. Sometimes depending on different themes, blind reproduction can be counterproductive.
"In offline exhibitions, different spaces often have different limitations and advantages. However, in the online exhibition, the limitations of the exhibition itself are almost zero, and there are many advantages beyond the real space, such as the physical constraint of gravity does not exist; there is no traffic restriction, the computer/mobile phone can view the exhibition; the exhibition space has no boundaries; and the capacity of the work is not capped. Offline exhibitions are more like 'fill-in-the-blank questions', and the audience's attention is usually focused on the work itself. The slime engine is online, the degree of freedom in production is very high, the space itself has a lot of information, and the combination of works will be a more comprehensive audiovisual experience. Kind explains, "In fact, the exhibition we do is slightly different from some other online exhibitions. They are to better restore the offline environment, and we are the Internet, the game engine, these points that can be used to play out, so the presentation will be different. ”
Headlines, co-commissioned by New Horizon Media Arts Center, Nabi Art Center and Rhizome
In January this year, Slime Engine launched the exhibition project "Holiday" at The Topless Gallery, which is the first large-scale offline work of this group of young post-95 artists, and the "Territory Map" and "Toutiao" in the exhibition are displayed offline for the first time. Slime Engine's "Headlines" series 1 and 2 (2020) were created in the "darkest hour" of the new crown epidemic raging around the world, and in 2020, strict physical isolation measures allow digital media to naturally occupy the whole of ordinary life: if the outbreak and spread of the virus has completely changed our social habits, then the proliferation and spread of more rapid digital information is bound to reshape our social life.
During the epidemic in 2020, day and night, it was bombarded by images on the Internet, and I was exhausted but eager to see the emergence of a news image. People can't distinguish between true and false, so they decided to create a "fake news", "We adapt the front page headlines of newspapers, from close-up reports, political news, weather forecasts, to popular science health, advertising and even gourmet cooking, by combining the creation of multiple artists and various forms of online display, launching a new mode of cooperation and production creation, but also reflecting the true portrayal of real life." ”
The "Toutiao" series of works contains all the sections of the real newspaper, but it is more than that, another "reality" composed of artists' works has gradually formed a completely overhead world view, the VR panorama, the bullet screen system, the movement of the graphics and text, etc. in the web page, so that the traditional communication carrier of the newspaper adds magic and cyberspace, and also makes the "headline" a propaganda tool that adapts to the current network environment. In the form of news pages and programs, the work uses bold headlines to show collective concerns in the context of a fictional global public event, where the artist's concocted "hookvirus" is no longer an epidemiological concept of infectious disease, but a digital message that fills the headlines. Artists give the virus a beautiful appearance, and the "hook virus" spreads, mutates, begins to intervene in personal life, climbs the entertainment of lace news, and even intervenes in international affairs. Every seemingly fictional headline seems to be inextricably linked to this virus, and when we are confronted, whether it is true or not in these bombing news is worth everyone's consideration.
Headline 2, 2020, Shanghai Plaza
In September 2020, Slime Engine appeared in the group exhibition of the same name in Shanghai Plaza with the "Headline 2" series, together with the works of Xu Zhen ® and Lu Pingyuan. Spanning three floors, the huge screen scrolls to broadcast the simulated interviews of the newsroom, the product production line and the lottery ball falling in the digital flower field, and the huge work has won the attention of the viewer while also arousing people's perception and deep thinking about reality. Through these exhibitions, they found that more and more public places needed images and digital content.
"Ocean is a watershed moment that marks our transformation." Lee Han Wai told us, "Since 'Ocean', we have begun to conduct in-depth exploration and discussion of some topics, such as 'Ocean' for territorial issues; and then "Map" has displayed the works of five artists living in various parts of the world in a spliced territory through the fragmentation of landmark buildings in various countries, and jointly explored the homogenization of urban culture in the context of globalization. In addition, we systematically organize everything, each new project emphasizes the sustainability of creativity, and we are working to build their own communities for young artists. ”
Today, among the artists who have cooperated with Slime Engine, in addition to famous artists such as Xu Zhen ®, Yang Zhenzhong, Lu Pingyuan, Zhou Xiaohu, etc., there are also artists from different fields, including photographer Liao Yijun, musician and interdisciplinary artist 33EMYBW, and Internet artist Wang New One. At the same time, they also co-produced a series of public works with the Topless Gallery, which represents their works. The scope of their cooperation has expanded from the Internet to large offline shopping malls. They position themselves between non-commodification and commercialization, insisting on giving priority to artistic value, and seeking the best balance between art and commerce.
This group of young artists who grew up in the online generation, with their maverick artistic language and artistic expression, has successfully "changed" our conventional aesthetic of art works. In the future, they hope to link the architectural field, just imagine, when the building is virtualized, people with VR or AR, into the virtual building space, what kind of immersive feeling will be?