2013 | Illusory Memories
Mo Yi : Illusory Memories
Aug. 31 — Oct. 31, 2013
Opening: Aug 31, 4 p.m, 2013
ThreeShadows +3 Gallery
Three Shadows +3 Gallery is pleased to present inaugural solo exhibition of Mo Yi: Illusory Memories, the series consisting of 21 installation work and 1 video installation. These new body of work reflects new transformations in Mo Yi’s art, including the transformation from the direct and realistic used of images to express his views on reality and aesthetics to the deconstruction of figurative images until they become abstracts, and the transformation from the production of pure images to the production of conceptually composite artwork. Both of these changes reflect Mo Yi’s strong willingness to doubt everything about his views on aesthetics and reality.
Mo Yi was born in Tibet in 1958, he was a professional soccer player long before went for his career as a full-time photographer in 1980s, introspection of society and culture as well as the demolish and reconstruction of urban city have been the essence of Mo Yi’s creation. Public collections include Houston Museum (USA), Guangdong Museum(China), Chinese Image and Vedio Archive (Canada), Zeit Foto Salon (Japan) as well as other private collection. At the present, Mo Yi has been employed as the mentor of “Master Seminar” of Three Shadows Photography Center.
“Illusory Memories” is an installation series Mo Yi created in 2 years, using squared industrial tiles sized 4.8x4.8cm each, he created an abstract image that come from classic pictures from China’s Cultural Revolution. Every piece is original hand-made wooden-keel filled in tiles reprinted and covered by “red-era” images and text after being polished, colored and glazed. There are red threads emerge from between tiles that make up the work, they grow from a text produced by the layering of abstract images and works, thereby creating a subtext for the text, enriching the text, and independently establishing a new way to interpret the text.
Either sequence, disorder or up-side-down of the images and texts, which remove the narrative aspects of these figurative news images, such that only an abstract effect remains. To view, moving closer to and farther from the work, our bodies allow historical figures to hide and reemerge. This process reflects history’s complexity and highlights history’s passivity. In Mo Yi’s work, this passivity is shown in the fact that, after we adjusts our distance from the work, the original picture may still reappear in the course of this active adjustment, This bodily viewing movement allows us to realize the simultaneous presence of the history as object and the object as artwork and consider the relative positions of ourselves, the artwork and history.
This exhibition employs two connected spaces, having 16 pieces demonstrated at 200 m² main hall while the video installation allocates in the central allows audience to bend over and discover the motion pictures in the box, around 450 ceramic blocks are arranged in criss-cross partner in the ground. Lastly, another 5 work will be displayed in the small VIP areas.
(Courtesy to Gu Zheng “New Work of Mo Yi” )
