PAUL SCHNEIDER

In late 2018, Schneider participated in the two-month residency programme initiated as a collaboration between K11 Art Foundation and The Royal Academy of Arts. The residency culminated in a solo exhibition at K11’s pop-up art space in Shenyang—the artist’s first solo show in China. In the show, titled Rule 32 (22 December 2018–22 January 2019), Schneider continued his investigation of humankind’s relationship to the external world as mediated through visual experience and habitual behaviour. Schneider covered the walls and windows and filled the exhibition space with large black-and-white vinyl stickers of cameras. Graphic and bold, the camera image was derived from a typeface known as Webdings, developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. Schneider attached plush toys that he had collected from stores in Shenyang onto the vinyl stickers. The density and blunt tones of the cameras were in stark contrast with the colourful plush toys of different cartoon characters such as the Pink Panther (popular in the 1960s in the United States and England) and Peppa Pig. According to the artist, these characters ‘bizarrely co-exist within the popular culture [in Shenyang]’.

The exhibition title was borrowed from a list of online protocols and conventions known as the ‘Rules of the Internet’, which were originally written for the internet group Anonymous and now are widely cited on the image-based bulletin board website 4chan. Citing the list’s 32nd rule, ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’, Schneider’s show reflected on the selfie culture he observed in Shenyang during his residency, particularly in the massive retail complex of K11: ‘No matter in the museum of Shenyang Imperial Palace, or in shopping malls, people tend to use art as background for portrait photos. So I decided to revert the subject-object relationship, exposing the audience to the large-scale cameras.’ Alluding to a contradictory circulation of selfie-taking (the camera stickers imply a ‘photographing’ of the audience, while the audience takes their own selfies with the vinyl stickers), Schneider challenged our visual and perceptual experience and questioned the role of camera in our connection with art and the world.

Ocula | 2019