What would it look like if the contemporary world is delineated in the form of landscape painting? Different people have different answers for that. If we put a deeper thought into that, we'd realize the contemporary world includes not only the man-made landscape, natural landscape but also the virtual internet world. In other words, it includes not only the seeable (i.e. landscape in front of our eyes) but also the perceivable (i.e. information of the cosmos). When the latter is received by our mind, it also constitutes a prominent part of the contemporary world. Moreover, as the starting point of the timeline of all time, the contemporary world, naturally, contains the earlier history - the past as well as the physical evidence of the past constitute another dimension of the contemporary world. More importantly, the delineation hereby created pertains only to the one who creates it as it is the reflection of one's inner world and life experience: the image of the world varies person by person.
What Bi Rongrong endeavours to do is to create a landscape painting of the contemporary world. As the process is long and complex, this 'painting' keeps evolving, slowly and yet constantly. A good mastery of ink painting skills enables her to gain a profound insight into landscape painting, which in return makes her work an ever-developing landscape of the contemporary time. Rather than completing everything all at once, she treats the 'painting' like a living object that grows organically and continuously. To be more specific, she collects many visual fragments she encounters during daily life or journeys. These fragments include street graffiti, Babylonian architectural patterns, tree silhouettes passing by train windows, and posters in different European cities. In Bi Rongrong's work, these source materials are presented in a somewhat decorative and abstract way. To the viewers, it is unfamiliar as it is highly personal. But in the meantime, as the visual sources are rooted in people's common visual experience, deep in the viewers' mind a sense of empathy will be aroused. Her work ranges from painting, video to installation and textile; and different media give out different senses of visual experiences. Fiction Landscape is a project with vitality. It is subtle and yet specific. With a root in the artist's personal experience, it manages to evoke viewers' perception of nature and the landscape.
Bi Rongrong's installation 'Fiction Landscape' originally was a part of her solo exhibition 'Fiction Landscape' held in December, 2016 at the A Thousand Plateaus Art Space. The exhibition was composed by drawing, painting, textile, installation and video. The works are based on her recent years' trips, where she collected the fragments of patterns used in the exhibition. Ancient Babylonian architectural patterns, traces of posters on European streets and shadows passing fast on the train are all likely to be collected into Bi Rongrong's library of materials. These materials are used within the context of the artist's personal life, and generate their new meanings and inner connections in the exhibition. This is how compositions of colors and spatial structures develop in Bi Rongrong's distinct style. With the changing of time and space, the resulting work may be a simple sketch, it may also develop into paintings, textile, spatial installations, and digital works. This is a process of the artist familiarizing herself with a different world and stepping beyond a familiar world. Bi Rongrong describes her work as 'mental travel.' She provides the audience a physical experience via the spatial expansion of paintings into three-dimensional installations. When the movement of vision and thought through the images and spaces forms a free assembly, this is Bi Rongrong's 'travel.' In the HK Art Basel exhibition, the installation 'Fiction Landscape' was taken away from the original exhibition, became as fragments, or as a starting point, combining with new elements to weave into a new landscape.
HOURS
Private View (by invitation only)
Tuesday, March 27
Wednesday, March 28
Vernissage
Wednesday, March 28, 2018, 5pm to 9pm
Public Days
Thursday, March 29, 1pm to 9pm
Friday, March 30, 1pm to 8pm
Saturday, March 31, 11am to 6pm