Sydney Shen

Artist

SYDNEY SHEN

Biography / Selected Works / Exhibitions / Related News

Sydney Shen was born in 1989 in Woodbridge, NJ. She now lives and works in New York. 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. Recent solo exhibitions include: Strange But True at Queens Museum, New York; Misery Whip at Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, Every Good Boy Does Fine at Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna; and Onion Master at New Museum, New York. Shen was the recipient of The Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency Program in 2019.

Sydney Shen, [Data Expunged], 2018

In [Data Expunged], 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.

Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions

2021   Cupio Dissolvi, Gallery Vacancy at Liste Art Fair Basel, Basel, CH
2021 Strange But True, Queens Museum, New York, US
2021 Misery Whip, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2019 Every Good Boy Does Fine, Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna, AT
2019 Onion Master, New Museum, New York, US
2018 Poor Thing, with Kyung Me, Hotel Art Pavilion, Brooklyn, US
2018 Spring 2018 - Sydney Shen, For Seasons, Zurich, CH
2017 Four Thieves Vinegar, Springsteen, Baltimore, US
2017 What’s Worse Than the Void Is Matter, Motel, Brooklyn, US
2016 骨蘋果茶 (Bone Apple Tea), Holy Motors, Hong Kong, CN
2016 Shriek wildly and throw yourself into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn, with Aleksander Hardashnakov, Roberta Pelan, Toronto, CA
2016 Hard to Be a God, with Joel Dean, Weekends, London, UK
2015   Master’s Chambers, Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, US

Group Exhibitions

2022   Heaven Above Sea Below, organized by Reilly Davidson & Jacques Louis Vidal, Lubov, New York, US
2022 Blue of Noon, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, DE
2022 Impressions of the Fall, 47 Canal, New York, US
2022 Self-Dismiss, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2021   The Transparent Man, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, DE
2021   [Permission Denied], Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2021   The Pest, Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, NL
2019 Space/Reflection, Condo Shanghai, Springsteen hosted by A+ Contemporary, CN
2019 Commutiny, SIBLING, Toronto, CA
2019 Flea Market, The Loon, Toronto, CA
2019 On the Use of Unknown Objects, Aldea, Bergen, NO
2019 no body to talk to, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York, US
2018 Jane Fonda, Pina, Vienna, AT
2018 The Private Collection of Water McBeer, Deitch Projects, New York, US
2018 The Changes Wrought, american medium, New York, US
2018 Note G, Chicago Manual of Style, Chicago, US
2018 PAIN IS THE MINIMUM, Condo Mexico City, Springsteen hosted by Breve, MX
2018 MOMENT I | EVER--, Shimmer, Rotterdam, NL
2017 A Most Filial Imprint, Aike Dellarco, Shanghai, CN
2017 Some Me, Into Timeworn Bits, FASTNET, Brooklyn, US
2017 Protocols Found in a Bathtub, Minibar, Stockholm, SE
2016 Closing Time – or – "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay in the 20th century", Weekends, Paris, FR
2016   Blue Plate Special, Dead Horse Bay, New York, US
2016 Left Gallery Summer Selection, with Laurel Schwulst as Perfume Area and Damon Zucconi, Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin, DE
2016   For granted, Hole Of The Fox, Antwerp, BE
2016 Safety Deposit Box, Lock Up International, Frankfurt, DE
2016 Welcome to Earth, the story so far..., High Tide, Philadelphia, US
2016 Redleaf, Sydney, Sydney, AU
2015   BLIND MIME IN REVERIE, KnowMoreGames, Brooklyn, US
2015 Unsafe at Any Speed, VIE D'ANGE, Montreal, CA
2015 [Aubergine], Et al., San Francisco, US
2015 A Rare Earth Magnet, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, US
2015 Against Automatism, fused, San Francisco, US
2015 Watching Things Burn, Springsteen, Baltimore, US
2015   ...Looking at myself from the second floor of an Italian restaurant in the Catskills..., american medium, New York, US
2015 hTERT, Hester, New York, US
2015   6th Sense, Minibar, Stockholm, SE

Awards & Fellowships

2019 The Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, New York, US
2019   Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency Program, New York, US
2019   Artist-in-Residence at Nordisk Nordisk Kunstnarsenter Dalsåsen, Dale, NO
2018   Queens Art Fund, Queens Council on the Arts, New York, US

Collections

Asymmetry Art Foundation, London, UK
Longlati Foundation, Hong Kong, CN
Macalline Art Center, Beijing, CN
Sigg Collection, Basel, CH