Kiki Xuebing Wang: The Green Ray and The Scorpions
2020. 9. 26 - 2020. 11. 22
Opening: 4 - 6 pm, September 26, 2020
LINSEED will present artist Wang Xuebing’s first solo project The Green Light and the Scorpion from September 26 to November 22, 2020.
After living in Los Angeles for many years and graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, Kiki Xuebing Wang continued her study in London, UK, and acquired her Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art. Wang’s paintings explore a twisted view of modern consumerism through the lens of luxury fashion and other objects of desire. Taken down from the spotlights and high pedestals, peeled off from massive billboards and commercial campaigns, the trending garments portrayed are trapped, marginalized, displaced, and obscured in the paradox of scale, location and value, examining the possibility to transform the non-valuable into the valuable, and to discern fictions from realities.
Artist's Statement:
In great Jules Verne’s mediocre The Green Ray, the eponymous phenomenon is a rare green flash given off by the sunset above the sea in the summertime for merely 1/5 seconds, for those who are fortunate enough to see. If an ordinary sunset represents death, exemplified by the end of summer, then this green ray produced by sunset symbolizes rebirth and the miracle of love. The simple, romanticized, modern and pseudo-feminist idea is to find something almost impossible to see.
Green rays can have utterly different meanings in other settings. For instance, in the 1982 classic Giallo film Tenebrae by Dario Argento, green is the background colour for one of the murder scenes. The eerie green lighting at night shifts Gestalt patterns and brings about disturbance and abjection.
On the other hand, I suffer from this weird disease: at times, a scorpion-like creature grows in my mouth. Its two front claws are attached to the hard palate in the cavity. It takes much courage to pull the scorpion out from it, that is, to cure. Excruciating and exhausting is the therapeutic process, not unlike the quest for the green ray, but once you are rid of it, you will ascend into a fantastic, Edenic world. My father would always be the one to pull it out of my mouth because my mother and everyone else is too scared to help. One time, I was waiting for him on top of a hill. He came over on his motorcycle and snatched the damned critter out of my mouth. The place we were in suddenly became Mulholland drive but somewhere in the English countryside. I got on his bike and explored the new places with him. And it’s like that every time, with Come Down to Us by Burial playing in the background. I am always waiting for the next scorpion.
Portrayed here among the small group of moderately sized paintings are objects of desire and fear, like pairing the green ray and the scorpion, repeatedly combatting and collapsing each other. Interested are the paintings in shedding impossible lights on cheap and luxurious objects alike, and in unfolding multiplicities of fictions and realities. Just like in Verne’s novel, here, the green rays and the scorpions within or without the paintings aim at escaping knowledge and intellect.