The moon is a celestial body that revolves around the earth, reflects the sun’s light, and controls the movements of our tides. This is a fact, an unalterable truth. Yet, the moon is more than just a mirror for the sun, in reality, it is also a cultural mirror that reflects the personal perspectives of every individual, society, and civilization that ever gazed up into the night sky, searching for answers. For the ancient Chinese, it is home to immortal Chang’e and her rabbit; for the Romans, the goddess Luna.
Although these historical fables, and hundreds others like them, do not change the facts of our observable world, they certainly alter our perception of it, and in turn, our reality. In LUXELAKE A4’s latest exhibition, Chinese artist Wang Yuyang uses light and digital logic to explore our reflective relationships with objects, culture, and each other within "Oblivion," and in doing so, offers us a fresh, but familiar, mirror to view ourselves in the digital age.
“ O B L I V I O N ”
Mission Briefing
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Before visiting the exhibition, you should know that Wang Yuyang is obsessed with the moon. If not literally, then certainly as an academic point of reference, and definitely as a tool for aesthetic display. Knowing this may help tether the casual viewer more firmly within the orbit of his highly conceptual work, and serves as an important lifeline to prevent lost would-be-art explorers from drifting away into the “void of the abstract,” where contemporary art often goes to die. That being said, even without any academic or artistic point of reference, "Oblivion" is a sleek exercise in the power of presentation, a nearly religious experience that only increases in intensity as time goes on.
A Voyage with Infinite Possibilities
Flanked on either side by two rows of illuminated canvasses, the bright white entrance hall culminates in an installation piece titled Aura that pulls the entire room into its clunky, yet calming, self-contained orbit. Reminiscent of the moon’s revolutions, the circular track of Aura is based on software set in motion by Wang Yuyang. Due to its imperfect programming design, i.e., human flaws, the television often functions irregularly by spinning off its axis in an unpredictable fashion, yet, the monitor never fails to project a perfect white halo as it slowly completes its circular rotation.
Aura illuminates how the power of infinite time encompass all things, including human failures and accomplishments, toward a fateful march into pure white oblivion. Although its relationship to the human condition is certainly heavy, watching the television slowly sputter and whirl its way around a predestined track, like so many of us in our day-to-day lives, was oddly reassuring in its comic absurdity, a motif echoed at the end of the exhibition.
光环， 影像装置（电机、监视器、电脑、不锈钢轨道），200x200x50cm，2020，图片由麓湖·A4美术馆提供
Aura, Video installation (television, surveillance equipment, computer, stainless steel track), 200x200x50cm, 2020, Courtesy of LUXELAKES·A4 Art Museum
In keeping with this theme, the 16 pieces of The Present, Which has Been Faded by the Futurethat encompass Aura are actually burn marks left by incandescent lamps. Although the lights once shined bright enough to burn their likeness onto canvas, they are now long gone, their life extinguished, the only visible reminder of their former existence an image on a wall.
Over time, even these, too, will fade into white nothingness, bleached by the power of the lights in the room until only a white canvas remains. Although this could be perceived as a meditation on the future’s power to erase our perceptions of the past, the relationship between The Present, Which has Been Faded by the Future, Aura, and constellations of stars cannot be ignored.
未来退去的现在202005-202008，绘画（布面油墨），50x40cm x4，2020，图片由麓湖·A4美术馆提供The Present, Which Has Been Faded by the Future 202005-202008, Painting (printing ink on canvas), 50x40cm x4, 2020, Courtesy of LUXELAKES·A4 Art Museum
An Exercise in Perception
Science informs us that stars are actually just balls of gas whose light is the byproduct of cosmic explosions that occurred millions of years ago, the violent aftermath of which is only just now visible to the human eye. Yet, this fact hasn’t stopped humans across history from gazing up into the night sky, and wondering.
For every civilization that has ever existed, the constellations represented something different, and these stories of gods, goddesses, and divine creatures shaped people’s collective culture, as well as their individual destinies. They still do today in the form of horoscopes and zodiac symbols, if you believe in them. Stars, much like the artwork of Wang Yuyang, are open to interpretation. As objects, they are merely the canvas onto which we project our own beliefs, and in turn, reflect our individual perspectives on reality.
Perhaps no artwork in "Oblivion" physically illustrates this artistic concept better than The Form of Formless, The Semblance of the Invisible. Upon leaving the first exhibition hall, Wu Yuyang invites audiences members to literally step into an enclosure full of “changeable” colors, and experience a phenomena of different perspectives for themselves. With a white domed ceiling that seems to stretch upward toward infinity and walls coated with a collage of randomly sprayed colors, The Form of Formless, The Semblance of the Invisible is truly a treat for the senses (and for selfies).
Yet, it also gives us an important chance to directly engage with Wang Yuyang’s concepts, and in the process, each other. Since the composition of the room changes based on the angle of the viewer, it’s fun to argue about who sees what. In truth, the room remains the same. But in reality, different people experience it differently. To the individual viewer, which is more powerful?
王郁洋，《惚恍》（The Form of Formless, The Semblance of the Invisible），2020，装置，3 x 3 x 3 m. 图片由麓湖·A4美术馆提供
The Moon as a Construct
The undisputed climax of "Oblivion" occurs with Artificial Moon 2, an installation more reminiscent of a disco ball than a lunar entity, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Indeed, with this piece, Wang Yuyang has stripped the moon of her white washed glamour, removed it from her throne in the heavens, adorned her with in tacky garb of human ingenuity, and placed her in the middle of an art exhibition; with the result being sublime.
人造月2（局部），装置（电机、屏幕、电脑、电线），直径400cm球体，2020，图片由麓湖·A4美术馆提供Artificial Moon 2, Installation (motors, screen, computer and cable), Sphere 400cm in diameter, 2020, Courtesy of LUXELAKES·A4 Art Museum
It is precisely this marriage between the ancient and the new, the mundane and the mysterious, that ties this exhibition together so well. After all, the moon is perhaps the second most recognizable object in human history aside from the sun, and as the link between the light and the dark, it occupies an important place within our collective conscious and unconscious minds.
By presenting such a familiar symbol entrenched within the stories of every culture’s hopes, dreams, and folklore, Wang Yuyang reinvents his own narrative using computer generated color patterns that seem to emerge and project outward from the center of the piece, the unpredictable nature of which ensures a unique experience for every viewer. In this way, using the moon as a technological construct seems an appropriate metaphor for meditating on our shared place within a rapidly evolving digital era, and offers us a chance to reflect on how we feel about that, from a personal perspective.
Writing：Rorí Mencin
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