This work is to explore the static performance of memory in dynamic time. My friend is the protagonist in the photo, and what is recorded is a conversation between me and her about memory. This is the memory of a conversation between me and her from my viewpoint, the expression and documentation of the memory in the present time. For her, it is the experience she recalled in the past, and the memories that happened in the past are recorded through her facial expressions. The feelings you have when you see this work are memories that happened in the future.
Duan, JX. (2021) I think what I think [oil painting].
150 x 140 cm
Camberwell, London
Sort of images of work in a gallery situation
FINAL ARTWORKS
Introduction:
In this work, the action of the audience, video-ed in real-time by a camera, is projected in technologically enhanced colour onto a painted canvas of disembodied body parts and anonymous portraits. So the audience, representing current, lived experience, overlays the painted sea of shifting, fragmented memories and imaginations. Here memory and real-time merge and the audience become part of the art creation. Interaction of artist, 'sitter' and audience, traditional and contemporary art technologies, and between past and present is created.
Beyond scared, 2021
170 x 150 cm
Mixed media: Acrylic paint and oil paint, programming algorithms
I collaborated with interaction designer GriffinKoo, creating a programming language by MAX/MSP software program and then projected it on my painting. The movements and sounds of the audience, through the programme, generate changes and shifts in the quality and colour of the images projected.
DETAILS OF WORKS
A random image of my painting auto-created by the environmental sound.
I use acrylic paint to paint the background because acrylic can quickly cover the surface. It is helpful for me to quickly record my feelings and implicit memory in the painting through brushes and paints. These subjective feelings and implicit memories are abstract and virtual. Thus, compared with oil paint, acrylic is the best material to paint abstract parts.
In the painting, I chose to use oil paint to depict the "heads" which be a collage with those stomachs. This is because the oil painting is more malleable, which is conducive to portraying more specific details and presenting a more realistic effect. This effect helps me to better contrast with the parts painted with acrylic paint and helps me to better describe the external memory in reality.
And on its surface, I also collage strips and integrate them. I attempt to use this collage method to connect the "virtual"/"fantasy" part of the painting with the real life of the current environment.
Painting exhibited in project exhibition room for group crit with Alicia Paz on 11th Aug. 2021
CLOSE-UP
Beyond scared, 2021, 170 x 150 cm; Connecting pictures and real-life media
SUPPORT WORK
Drawing
Experiement
Beyond scared, experiments and process.170 x 150 cm; Mix media: Acrylic paint and oil paint
Beyond scared, experiments and process.170 x 150 cm; Mix media: Acrylic paint and oil paint
OTHER WORKS
I try to use ceramic art to present my works, to express my understanding of memories and portraits.
I have three ceramic art projects. The first idea is that I use abstract forms to make the facial features of my portrait into different ceramic parts. Finally, they are stacked or assembled and presented to the audience. I used a plaster cast to turn over a small model of an old television set. I plan to make many television sets and merge them with my abstract portrait. Because television represents memories of the past, the self-in-memories will gradually become blurred and abstract with time. This is also related to self-recognition. People will have different self-recognition at different stages of self-recognition, so the memory in portrait painting will not change.
In this work, the ceramic part abstracts the facial features. I was inspired by 'Schrödinger's cat' which is a famous thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Every event is a branch point, in different branches of the universe that are equally real but cannot interact with each other. That's like the memory in the past and present stored in a portrait, gazes back at a place of belonging, revealing a distance, both temporal and spatial, that penetrates our experience of difference.
Gaze yourself ; ceramic, 2021
Gaze yourself ceramic with oil painting, 2021
DETAILS & CLOSE-UP
No place like home, 2017. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24″X36″.
Other Ceramic Works
Description:
My second project is to make a fossil-like, coral-like ceramic container, and fill the container with plaster baby faces of different looks. Because things like fossils symbolize eternity, people generally have a common understanding that eternal things carry more memories. For example, a machine can carry a lot of explicit memory, but it cannot actively inherit memory, while humans can.
