Sydney Shen

Artist

SYDNEY SHEN

Sydney Shen was born in 1989 in Woodbridge, NJ, and graduated from the Cooper Union with full tuition merit-based scholarship. She now lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Onion Master at New Museum (2019); Every Good Boy Does Fine at Sophie Tappeiner (2019); and Four Thieves Vinegar at Springsteen Gallery (2017). Shen uses sculptures and installations to create an atmosphere of wretched apprehension, examining the limitation of mentality through the extremity of the physical body. Exploring through various sources from historical and contemporary art history, including but not limited to medieval excruciation, supernatural horror fiction, and Internet subcultures, Shen frankensteins organic and fabricated materials such as Chinese and Western medical apparatus and instruments, graphic designed ornaments, and biological specimens. With the enticing but horrifying duality in her work, Shen manages to drag the audiences into the bizarre yet motley world she creates, directs and performs in.

In [Data Expunged] (see image below), Sydney Shen employed the form of hospital privacy screens, which is dissembled from its original context and surgically sutured with hand-braided aluminum chainmailles. The folding screens stands on the ground of uncertainty and fragility, while providing limited protection and privacy for recipients on both sides of the screens, the seeming balance is easily challenged and interrupted. The position of the objects being protected of and being protected from is constantly exchanged and modified in relation to the physical and psychological existence of the divider, obscuring the boundary between the hunter and the prey, the sadism and the masochism, and the assaulter and the victim. The implied bodily violence and aggression is further reinforced within the professed elegance of the aluminum chainmailles, which references to medieval chain armor, functioning both as protective equipment for external penetration and decoration in modern conversation. Its combination of combativeness and ornamental value echos with the social political capacity of human body in historical and contemporary context as the spontaneous activist and the passive observee. With the enticing but horrifying duality in her work, Shen manages to drag the audiences into the bizarre yet motley world Shen creates, directs and performs in.

Sydney Shen, [Data Expunged], 2018

Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions

2020 Solo Exhibition, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, China (upcoming)
2019 Onion Master, New Museum, New York, US
2019 Every Good Boy Does Fine, Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna, Austria
2018 Spring 2018 - Sydney Shen, For Seasons, Zurich, Switzerland
2017 Four Thieves Vinegar, Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore, US
2017 What’s Worse Than the Void Is Matter, Motel, Brooklyn, US
2016 Hard to Be a God, w/ Joel Dean, Weekends, London, UK
2016 Shriek Wildly and Throw Yourself into Whatever Bottomless Gulf May Yawn, w/ Aleksander Hardashnakov, Roberta Pelan, Toronto, Canada
2016 骨蘋果茶 (Bone Apple Tea), Holy Motors, Hong Kong, China
2015 Master’s Chambers, Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, US

Group Exhibitions

2019 Space/Reflection, Condo Shanghai, Springsteen Gallery hosted at A+ Contemporary, Shanghai, China
2019 Commutiny, SIBLING, Toronto, Canada
2019 Flea Market, The Loon, Toronto, Canada
2019 no body to talk to, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York, US
2019 On the Use of Unknown Objects, Aldea, Bergen, Norway
2018 Jane Fonda, Pina, Vienna, Austria
2018 The Private Collection of Water McBeer, Deitch Projects, New York, US
2018 Classroom, Entrance, New York, US
2018 Poor Thing, Hotel Art Pavilion, Brooklyn, US
2018 Note G, Chicago Manual of Style, Chicago, US
2018 The Changes Wrought, American Medium, New York, US
2018 Moment I | Ever--, Shimmer, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2018 PAIN IS THE MINIMUM, Condo Mexico City, Springsteen Gallery hosted at Breve, Mexico City, Mexico
2017 Protocols Found in a Bathtub, Minibar, Stockholm, Sweden
2017 Some Me, Into Timeworn Bits, FASTNET, Brooklyn, US
2017 A Most Filial Imprint, Aike-Dellarco, Shanghai, China
2016 Redleaf, Sydney, Sydney, Australia
2016 Welcome to Earth: The Story So Far, High Tide, Philadelphia, US
2016 Left Gallery Summer Selection, Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin, Germany
2016 Safety Deposit Box, Lock Up International, Frankfurt, Germany
2016 Closing Time – or – "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay in the 20th century", Weekends, Paris, France
2015 hTERT, Hester, New York, US
2015 Watching Things Burn, Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore, US
2015 Against Automatism, fused, San Francisco, US
2015 [Aubergine], Et al., San Francisco, US
2015 A Rare Earth Magnet, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, US