Exhibition View
Exhibition View
Exhibition view
Exhibition View
Exhibition ViewAs the second episode of “Light Pavilion Project” of Taikang Space in 2016, “Liang Ban: Slightly Concussed” presents ten short videos which were shot with smartphone, or specifically speaking, its camera and touchpad at different venues/backgrounds during the past one year. Shown in loops, these short videos record respectively how the artist manipulates another smartphone under diverse background settings. All these videos share the same features: They are very succinct and brief. Here one can find a quiet humor form time to time interrupted by some unexpected elements. Just like the title of the exhibition, a humble comedy with meaningful implications.
As told by the artist, these series of works are not confined to the narrow definition of video art and they are distinct from the effortless flow of images produced by the masses in the smartphone era. Straightforward in form and language, hardly anything attractive or transcendent resides in the daily aspects of life shown on the screen. Here we find smartphones, pillows, the interior setting of an office, and sockets; occasionally a beach or a creek are seen in very limited, fixed perspective, hardly conducive to spectacle. More important is the fact that these scenes were all shot on a smartphone and all follow an everyday aesthetic of triviality. The shot cut and the mise-en-scène are subject to the forms and constraints of the snapshot, and the content recorded includes manipulation performed on another smartphone. If we seek the expression of a concept or meaning that will connect us with the core principles of video art, ultimately we find only a counterexample: perhaps the privilege we assign to these concepts and meanings is being quietly erased, blurred or shaken loose in the quotidian imageries and logics of these short film clips. However, we should distinguish this convert from the unprincipled admission or compromise to reality. Prudent self-reflection of the artist has endowed these film clips a precious quality of authentic artworks different than the flow of everyday life. Other than simply transcribing or reproducing the everydayness, Liang’s work further simulate, virtualize and parallel the ordinary life. The latter allows numerous “dislocation” and “in-between” which enables a viewer to communicate with the life itself by an alternative identity in a quite mundane surrounding (perhaps on the bed, perhaps by the table, perhaps in the subway or on a bench).
Nowadays, the reality has already become a virtual image of its own. The task of artists in this ear is to unveil a hidden truth: If you want to travel around world without leaving your room, then all you need is a bit of imagination. Anyway, don’t forget the fact that our beds are actually moving with the globe at a speed of hundreds of meters while we are sleeping.
| Light Pavilion Project |
As a site for individual project, “Light Pavilion” is initiated in 2012, based on the second floor of Taikang Space. It aims at providing a flexible platform for artists to realize their ambitions. After an interval of two years, “Light Pavilion” is restarted in 2016, embracing a vision always open to uncertainty, complicity and detournement. It’s not only a site for sensational immersion and experiential evocation but also a forum dedicated to diversity and otherness.
| Light Pavilion Project |
As a site for individual project, “Light Pavilion” is initiated in 2012, based on the second floor of Taikang Space. It aims at providing a flexible platform for artists to realize their ambitions. After an interval of two years, “Light Pavilion” is restarted in 2016, embracing a vision always open to uncertainty, complicity and detournement. It’s not only a site for sensational immersion and experiential evocation but also a forum dedicated to diversity and otherness.
