SEBASTIÁN GORDÍN, YUXIAO RAN

Gordin’s second solo exhibition in the gallery will dig deeply into his personal memory.The poet Vanna Andreini has written very eloquently and movingly about the artist’s new body of works.Gordin asks the question, ‘Can the sounds that pierced us be forgotten, like we forget the words of a foreign language? Or couldit be that sounds resurface the way smells do, suddenly, when passing by something or someone? If they are not forgotten, whathappens to them?

In this exhibition, Sebastian Gordin searches for the sounds that constitute him, that gave his life colour and depth. He dives intothe sea of his memory, seeking out the songs he loved, the lyrics that accompanied him, and brings them back up to the surface:He presents them with a support on which to float, an image to which those words are linked- whether by chance or by theunfathomable movements in the stream of memory.

In ‘The Noise of a Falling Engine’, we encounter a series of album covers made of wood and stained veneers. Sebastian Gordindelights us not only with the enigma that connects words to images, but also with the choice of colours that make up the ‘record’.This new exhibition by the Argentinian artist does not, however, consist only of the resurfacing of the sounds that make up hisflesh, but also of a mise en abyme with another group of art works.

Our body is our home and it is filled with echoes. What happens to us, then, when fear amplifies them? The threatened houseloses ground and from our heaven- these things that represent our comforts - , pieces begin to fall; and faced with the failure ofreality’s engine, a nest is improvised with that which is unique to our humanity: Culture..’ - Vanna Andreini

In a very different way and with equally different intentions, the works of the Chinese artist Yuxiao Ran also draw onmemory. At first impact, what strikes the viewer is the strong parentage to surrealism: However, in reality, what primarilyinterests the artist is exploring the limitations of pictorial language when seen in a contemporary context. Ran createscomplex still-lives and landscapes which purposefully contain mundane imagery which can be found in multiculturalcontexts. However, the highly unusual juxtaposition of the images forces people to look at these familiar images withfresh eyes. He explains perfectly his intent: ‘by extracting the pictorial language from their original contexts, I want touse a playful way to challenge, question, and subvert our habitual reading of images and symbols. Undoubtedly, thisway of creation produces chaos and a lack of logical sense, but for me, this chaos is just the kind of realism that Iexperience in the contemporary social environment (s)’. The artist can often present a work which, within it, containsdifferent styles of painting. This can really throw the viewer yet his intent is very coherent with his artistic philosophy.‘Human nature dictates that we tend to favour pattern over randomness, which ensures the order we experience in ourdaily lives. Won’t it be extremely disappointing and dull if painting also has to submit to this inertia of ours?‘His strikingly original narrative inexorably draws us in. Cartoon characters used in unusual contexts like the over lifesize bear who, from his left hand is holding a road sign, a strange headless figure dressed in white, a plane whichdisappears into a painting hanging on the wall, some ancient stones assembled as if they were remnants fromStonehenge whilst another rectangular shape juts out from the sky and black geometrical shapes which invade thepicture plane at odd angles are a few of the images which give the paintings their very particular surreal quality.The title of the exhibition ‘Fable Boulevard’ demonstrates unequivocally that Ran is a story-teller as is Gordin. Both areweavers of visual stories which, as much as great written stories, enable us both to marvel at human creativity whilstalso allowing us to become intertwined in a creative dialogue with the product of both these artists’ extraordinary fertileimaginations.

Press release courtesy Cadogan