State of the Arts: Group Show Explores the Idea of Detour at Magician Space

After four years hosting solo shows, Magician Space has decided to amass a crew for their latest exhibition Access Through a Detour, selecting a large and solid group (11 artists in total) of up-and-coming Chinese artists: Aajiao (an avatar of Xu Wenkai), Wong Ping, Liu Yefu, Liu Yin, Nabuqi, Song Ta, Wang Shang, Cici Wu, Lantian Xie, Yu Ji and Yan Jun.

What brings the show together is the desire to find new ways to engage the viewer through what the curator considers to be “a detour,” but don’t be misled, here the detour is part of the plan, and encompasses strategies, allusions or somatic experiences that better-complement the appreciation of the works.

The works shown at this exhibition find new ways to articulate messages, asking the viewer to think beyond what meets the eye. Arguably, such a statement could be widely applied to art making: referencing previous works or current events, and exploring and reinterpreting new and different mediums are prevalent techniques within contemporary art practice, however, that being acknowledged, this show truly resonates from the vigor each artist brings to their own experimentations with concept and media manipulation.

Yan Jun, Lanzhou-born but Beijing-based, is known as a leading light in Beijing’s sound art and experimental music world. His piece, “Deep in the Cloud”, is a video installation reproducing moments of his 2013 performance with Yu Ji at AM Art Space in Shanghai. A ruinous room is filled with debris, in which the shapes and the movement of the performers and audience created shadows in the dust that were bound to Yan Jun’s sound. The video installation allows a glimpse of this powerful moment when multiple-connections were established between artists, viewers, space, and the medium itself. 

Liu Yin’s drawings take inspiration from many sources: current news feeds, adverts, and artistic masterpieces themselves, which are then rendered through a shojo-manga filter. The work “Two Warriors” (2015) belongs to the latter category (borrowing heavily from Spanish artist Goya’s “La Maja” and “La Maja Desnuda”) and consists of two paintings depicting two soldiers in a garden lying next to each other: In one they’re wearing their official garments and in the other they’re naked. The pieces follow the aesthetic Liu Yin is known for: The soldiers are depicted as kawaii (cute) characters with big sparkly eyes, soft expressions, and a liberal dose of naiveté. The result is two ambiguous entities that in many ways defy their original source of inspiration.

Another eye-catching installation is Cici Wu’s piece “Foreign Object #1 Fluffy light (Wang Xu)”. Wu is known for using electronics and machinery to create quirky mechanisms that elaborate on the intimate relationship we share with machines and technology.  The device in the installation captures frames from scenes in films and projects them emitting LED light accordingly, creating a new narrative based on a subject that is hardly perceptible to the untrained eye.

Take your time to explore these and the other works at Magician Space over the next few weeks. Access Through a Detour is a free exhibition and will be on view until Mar 11.

Magician Space
Tue-Sun, 10am-6pm, 798 Dashanzi Art District, 2 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District (5840 5117)
大山子艺术区朝阳区朝阳区酒仙桥路2号大山子艺术区

Images courtesy of Magician Space