This exhibition is organized by Shanghai chi K11 art museum.
The universe is an endless hoax, in which everything is perpetually mutating. In the creation of art, medium can be regarded as a tool, which allows for the unconventional transmutation of materials that lies beyond the naked eye. It is imbued with potentials to probe behind appearance and shatter pre-established frameworks.
The exhibition Capricious Structure features independent projects by four young artists from both China and abroad, including Andrew Luk (Hong Kong), Brendan Fowler (Los Angles), Wu Juehui (Hangzhou), and Shen Xin (London/Amsterdam). The works presented reflect on the mutual intervention between the artificial and the natural, the interstices of interior and exterior, and the fictionality of video, all contesting the capricious nature of medium.
Artists from various backgrounds use their idiosyncratic perspectives and visual lexicons to reconstruct narrative space, exploring ideas around urban conditions, industrialization, technology, economy, and race. Emerging from and yet operating outside of the mainstream culture, artists have orchestrated a series of heterogeneous temporalities. They can be seen as a manifestation of the dynamic worlds envisaged by the artists as well as a mind game with the viewer.
Appropriate Responses For Featherless Bipeds With Broad Flat Nails
Plato defined man as “featherless bipeds”. When he was praised for the definition, Diogenes the Cynic plucked the feathers off of a chicken and brought it into Plato’s Academy, saying, “Behold! I’ve brought you a man.”
After this incident, Plato added “with broad flat nails” to his definition of man.
The material based and process driven artwork of Andrew Luk draws lines between that which is natural and manmade. His artwork reverses and subverts these prescribed roles, often through the use of unconventional materials or considered modes of production.
Much of the work in this exhibition also reflects on the invisible, yet massive quantities of technology and labor that are currently in use throughout the world. As technology diminishes the evidence of human labor, such labor is subsequently devalued. The acceleration of change and compression of time allows innovation to take effect as soon as it is discovered, leaving little to no room for reflection and assessment. Ultimately, this may lead the value of a person to equal that of a featherless biped… with broad flat nails.
Andrew Luk (b. 1988) is a Hong Kong artist whose material-based practice of creating installations, sculptures, and images investigates how civilization regards itself in relation to nature by way of examining human projects as well as studying naturally occurring systems of entropy, anti-entropy, and preservation.