On May 28, 2016, Beijing Today Art Museum presented a grand show of new media entitled “Waiting for You – Infinite Time and Space: Tian Xiaolei’s Solo Exhibition”. The exhibition is a solo exhibition of new media by the winner of the first Wang Shikuo Award Tian Xiaolei, and Director of Today Art Museum Gao Peng is the curator.
Tian Xiaolei graduated from CAFA, majored in digital media in 2007, since then he has created a new work almost every year which has established his own distinctive characteristics and unique style. The videos by the artist are filled with voyeurism and a sense of instability in future space, the time and space is extended, distorted, messy and then withered, the hybrid of organs, limbs and machinery indiscriminately make love, want only swing in the desert, the starry sky and temple, Tian Xiaolei said that, “Digital media is the carrier of my creation, I am interested in the constantly accelerating uncertainty of the times, the relationship between science, technology and life during the future evolution, and the unknown new species of the accelerated hybrid times. I create world specimens in the future from the perspective of the artist, melting and mixing history, religion, science, technology, a body that creates a new visual experience.”
The exhibition presents the “Ode to Joy” (2011), which is an early piece by Tian Xiaolei, who builds a seemingly happy but actually numb and indifferent world of the amusement park, where the workers missing a face have a “fake happiness”, behind the brilliant color and tight rhythm it is the artist’s reflection on reality: “The earth is like a prison, but the imprisoned people are unaware, people are repeatedly going toward this mirage again and again, how long will they be happy? Is the amusement park island in animation actually the sanctuary for people’s hearts? Or, is it really the paradise that people are looking for?”
Digital technology and digitizing opened a door for Tian Xiaolei so he can point to an infinite world that only existing in the future. The artist uses digital technological media, to transfer realistic thinking to the future: Venus de Milo, thousands of artificial mechanical arms, a gray cold city, the metal organs which are spread everywhere, in the first hall it presents the “Poetry” (2014), where the artist imagines a diversified state of life in the future, to create a hybrid and mixed virtual space; “Creation” (2015) is projected on two white walls of the exhibition hall, a human body with mechanical arms that looks like the Buddha with one thousand faces and hands follow the rhythm so they shake, mixing psychedelic music and lighting, the use of metals to replace some parts of the human body, the screen suggests a religious sense which seems to confirm the creative theme of a robot; specially designed for the exhibition, the “Infinite”gorgeously debuts in the form of a mirrored house, the exhibition hall is like a virtual space that is full of a technological and futuristic sense, the images projected on the mirrors are located at different angles that surround the audience who can’t distinguish the virtual from reality.
Postmodern American scholar Donna Haraway issued the “Cyborg Declaration” in 1985, she said that cyborg is “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” The declaration of “we are all cyborgs” changes the design of the future or the common presets in science fiction to a kind of description of reality. In her view, each of us is a cyborg, because we are all a mixture of technology, science and artificial intelligence, nobody can independently exist. And Tian Xiaolei’s images cite the existing cultural symbols and images, those images such as the human bodies with mechanical arms, the people docked with machinery, is revealing the position of “we are all cyborgs”.
Tian Xiaolei said that, “The only thing I want to do is to make the existing culture, science and technology, and body fully make love, to develop a hybrid and create unknown interesting things – dreams have always refused to be sober while the game is born to fight against reality, they both represent a strong creative force, which is like the ubiquitous rhythm of the work, desperately dancing in various secular restrictions, the use of freedom, voluntary and non-utilitarian to confront the cold and autocratic social reality.” Tian Xiaolei is a representative of the group of young artists that collectively refract the young subculture and marginal culture has influences on the mainstream culture and even a counter-attack. Their sharp artistic language and absolute artistic attitude indicate a huge potential and inevitable future developmental trend in digital media art.
At present, a cultural trend that considers technology, the hybrid, machinery, and noumenon as keywords is an increasingly surging worldwide tide in development. When the terms such as the cyborg, artificial intelligence, virtual space, more and more intensively appear in public topics, when AlphaGo beats the human brain, it seems that we have to face the approaching problems - how will we be us in the future? Where is the boundary between human and non-human? Where are our lives going to? The artist who is self-proclaimed the creator of the virtual world uses his created infinite space to give us inspiration. It is like the suggestion of the title of the exhibition “Waiting for You” so that seems to be a doomed arrival and irreplaceable oath – “Wait for You” has nothing to do with emotion, nor does it involve ambiguity, but only a future declaration by a sensitive artist.
Text by Lin Jiabin, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO, Photo by Today Art Museum
