Fairs
Art Basel Hong Kong
2023
Sydney Shen
First Chair
Discoveries sector
Booth 3D37
Dates_ March 21-25, 2023
Venue_ Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
2023
Sydney Shen
First Chair
Discoveries sector
Booth 3D37
Dates_ March 21-25, 2023
Venue_ Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present Sydney Shen’s solo project First Chair at Discoveries sector of Art Basel Hong Kong 2023. The project title derives from the premier position in an orchestra band yet gradually leads to the first seating training for children’s behaviors. It symbolizes one of the earliest milestones when an individual is civilized and disciplined to adopt social rules and hierarchy that deviates from one’s natural instincts. An emphasis is placed on basic needs and the body, and on the disciplinary institutionalization counterposed to the commands of the will. Shen creates sculptures and installations that arouse a level of uncanniness and otherworldliness, bringing forth a precarious basis for contemporary living and social structure.
In this project, the forms of modern amusement parks’ facilities and vintage seating equipment are introduced by Shen to examine carnivalesque as the counterbalance between hierarchical power structures and utopian individual freedom. First invented in 1946, the amusement park has grown into a symbol of mass entertainment and excessiveness. The facilities of which are engineered to trigger extreme thrill and fear of danger while ensuring the safety of the visitors. The carnivalesque of amusement parks provides an escape window that departs from daily reality where eccentricity is encouraged with the dissolution of hierarchical relationships, and individuals are incarnated as carnival bodies that are seen as transgressing and outgrowing their own limits. It thus examines the fine line between endurance and impulsivity in one’s self-complacency that investigates the limitation of mentality through the terminus of the physical body. Inspired by stereoscopic photography—the 3D imaging craze of the Victorian era that often stages a version of fine art or inaccessible tourist attractions to the masses, the series of Six Non-Natural Necessary Things (2023) employ images of hair ties randomly thrown or dropped out from tourists on a rollercoaster ride. These mundane objects create a level of absurdity that exceed daily reality. The act of leaving the often neglected commodities started coincidentally due to the gravity and speed of the facility, yet gradually developed into a carnivorous ritual as the commercially designed scenery of the amusement park is transformed into a wishing well for good luck as a part of the urban legends. Shen playfully frames the bizarre images with Victorian style ringtoss boards, reconstituting the stakes with a plethora of grotesque objects. Ringtoss game is therefore reconstructed from a childish amusement to a device of punishment. The enticement in playing and the excitement of winning the desired prize are superseded by carnal knowledge recalling the fear of being penetrated and being put on display. The subtle play between pleasure and suffering is further emphasized in First Chair (2023) with the build of a wooden convertible stroller perching on a lifted hill. Destined to heighten the easiest or cheapest physical responses—the thrill, the highly-constructed form of a rollercoaster enacts the idea of mass entertainment through public spectacle of horror. The synesthesia of intensity, speed and weightlessness is accomplished not only by participation but also from spectators’ perspectives, which simultaneously echoes with the act of shame parades, associating one’s urgency with public aspiration. Melancholy abject, Shen satirically re-stage the classic movie scene from The Bad Seed (1956) through visual symbolizations, in which the seemingly innocent child serial murderer is spooked to be sentenced to death on an electric chair designed specifically for kids. The naivete of the care-giving furniture accompanies with the apprehension of the notorious killing machine, which synchronically reverberates with the out of the body experience through extreme physical choreography of the rollercoaster. First Chair (2023) awakens the contradictory bodily memories of an individual occupying a daily necessity instrument, inducing beyond immobilization and pure functionality, yet is ludicrous, excessive, even glorified and baroque. Lifted to its towering hill, the stroller is transformed into a throne, standing to the signification of power, which not only indicates a state of superiority among crowds but also delves into an innate desire in the experience of the world as a human, to feel and to take control of oneself. In Drop Tower (2023) with prayer’s stools hanging from a seeming anatomical display model, Shen mischievously blurs the line between self-indulgence and self-punishment. By replacing the track of the vessel with an elongated human spine to form ladders of excitement, the eroticization of the punitive items is in part of the paradox that extreme or restrictive states will reveal the unknowable and lead to freedom from time, space and self, prompting the experience of transcendence. On an affective level, it creates a particularly intense feeling of immanence and unity—of being part of a historically immortal and uninterrupted process of becoming beyond human existence. It thus recognizes embodiment, in contrast with dominant traditions which flee from it in that very moment. |
|