Lu Sisi | [TAIKONAUT] | Migrant Birds Space | 20.04.-01.06.2018

until 01.06. | #1974ARTatBerlin | Migrant Birds Space presents from 20th April 2018 the exhibition [TAIKONAUT] by the artist Lu Sisi.

Migrant Bird Space Berlin is delighted to announce [TAIKONAUT], a new solo show by Lu Sisi that brings key visual and sonic works from the artist’s The Age of Digital / Analogue and 㸚 (li) series together under one roof.

The Age of Digital / Analogue is a series forming one of the nine parts of Lu Sisi’s monumental epic The Age of Digital. Lu’s 2011-13 epic offers a historical reflection on the industrial revolution, its parts ranging from epoch-marking new industrial technologies such as printing presses, weaving looms, cameras and steam engines to the Welsh forests once lost to industrialisation but now regrown. Lu Sisi’s visionary treatment of this history rivals an epic poem, majestic in its endeavour and pathos. Like a taikonaut from the future who roves back through history, it fuses and intersects chaos, technology and romanticism.

Lu Sisi shifts his unique gaze from the industrial revolution to a broader theme in history and human creative endeavour in li 㸚 (2017). A digital audio-visual creation already experienced by museum-goers in Beijing and Shanghai, this is a cross-genre exploration, by way of Peking opera and electronic music, that reassembles shattered fragments of the Eastern and Western visual and auditory experiences in digital and analogue form into a lustrous audiovisual tapestry.

From industry to nature and back to human culture, Lu Sisi’s romantic sensibility informs his entire œuvre. Far more than an artist in thrall to the senses, Lu Sisi adds overarching narrative logic and ambition, creates warp and weft between Eastern and Western cultures, and draws threads across space and time; dreamily but deftly, he foregrounds the charm of romanticism within technology.

Innumerable scintillae of insight form a circle of enlightenment, crystallising as lessons in the past, present and future. Lu Sisi’s digital romanticism betrays a dream – a yearning – of unique texture. His is a stance, an allusion, an all-encompassing discipline, as if he took on a new body and soul to wander between the ages through audiovisual pathways.

Whereas the tension between the technological era and romanticism remains unresolved, and its higher meaning remains too hard for us to grasp, leaving us trying both to break down and to conserve them like things or substances, Lu Sisi offers an excellent sword to this Gordian knot. The exhibition consists of 13 digital works of art, both dynamic and static, with which Lu Sisi uses digital audiovisual media to unearth the future and teleport to the past.

NB: TAIKONAUT is a portmanteau of the Chinese word taikong (space) and the Greek word naútēs (voyager, sailor). Western media is increasingly accepting of this word for Chinese astronauts, and it is a recent addition to major English dictionaries.

The artist

The only audiovisual artist from the Chinese-speaking world to have appeared at the renowned sonica visual sonic arts festival, Lu Sisi conjures up works with a certain aura, every image frame almost like wallpaper in how it endures in the mind (or ears). Lu Sisi is a new-era artist from Inner Mongolia, currently based in London. His work generally combines live performance, dynamic video, film, music composition, design and installation. His key work The Age of Digital / Analogue saw the artist take inspiration from British cultural heritage; drawing links between past and present, it traces an audiovisual journey weaving industry and nature together.

Lu Sisi’s talents have earned accolades from Sky Academy and the New York Festival.  His new work adopts a tolerant, open-minded gaze; in its collisions and reverberations between electronic music and Peking Opera, and between Chinese and Western scripts and palettes, it builds a multi-level edifice of visual and auditory harmonies, an audiovisual montage in time and space, a new cultural conscience and grammar.

2017 New media exhibition, Amitabha, Migrant Bird Space Berlin
2017 Audiovisual, li II, Peking Opera / techno, Modern Art Museum Shanghai
2017 Audiovisual, li I, Peking Opera / techno, Minsheng Art Museum Beijing
2016 Jaguar Land Rover Composition / Sound design for PR Visual Identity commissioned by Imagination, UK
2016 MINI Vision Next 100 artistry Concept film, China
2016 The Age of Digital / Analogue, Ozasia Festival, Sub Verse, Nexus Arts, Australia
2016 Partikel, Counteraction Album, Electronic / sound design Producing, UK
2016 Falling, Fashion Film Festival Milano Official selection, Milan, Italia
2016 The Age of Digital / Analogue at sonica, London / Performance, UK
2016 Facing Up to Mackintosh, New York Architecture & Design Film Festival, USA
2016 Haizhen Wang, autumn/winter collection: Film Falling, Director / sound design / Editor, UK
2016 Facing Up to Mackintosh, FIFA International Festival of Films on Art, Montréal
2015 The Age of Digital / Analogue sonica 2015, Mitchell Theatre, Glasgow
2013-2016 The Age of Digital / Analogue Filmed in a range of locations across Scotland and England, capturing machinery and landscape. Filming partners include Jaguar factory, Sky TV, National Museum Of Scotland, the Falkirk Wheel, Torness Nuclear Power Station, New Lanark World Heritage Site, The Glasgow School of Art, Kempton Steam Museum, Isle of Skye, Snowdonia. Work presented at sonica 2015 in Glasgow (see above). Awarded £30,000 Sky Academy Arts Scholarship and £9,200 Arts Council grant; also successful crowdfunding campaign. UK
2016 Haizhen Wang, autumn/winter collection, London / Shanghai Fashion Week: show director / sound design, London, Shanghai
2015 JD.COM Composition / sound design for JD.COM advertisement, China
2015 Durex Composition / sound design for Durex advertisement, China
2015 Durex Composition / sound design for Durex event visual Identity, China
2015 Haizhen Wang, autumn/winter collection, London/Shanghai Fashion Week: show director / sound design, London / Shanghai
2015 Forest Rising, opening for Chassol’s ‘big sun’, Rich Mix, London / Performance
2015 Sky Academy Showcase, Village Underground, London, presented extract from The Age of Digital / Analogue at event hosted by Melvyn Bragg / Performance, UK
2011-2014 BBC Scotland, Facing Up to Mackintosh, Glasgow Visuals / sound design for documentary of Glasgow School of Art Reid building, UK
2014 Facing Up to Mackintosh, BBC Art Screen Festival, UK
2014 Haizhen Wang, spring/summer collection, London Fashion Week closing show: director/sound, UK
2013 Documentary on Lu Sisi’s practice broadcast on Sky Arts. Also created opening sequence for Sky Academy Arts Scholarships, broadcast on Sky Arts, UK
2013 Haizhen Wang, autumn/winter collection, Shanghai Fashion Week closing show / sound design, Shanghai, China
2013 Haizhen Wang, autumn/winter collection, London Fashion Week closing show / sound design, London, UK
2012 Cryptic Nights, Glasgow (Colour Deaf) Installation / Performance / sound design, UK
2011 The Telfer Gallery, Glasgow (Colour Deaf) Installation/Performance / sound design, UK
2011 Graphic Thought Facility (GTF) London: animation assistant, editing and sound design for Textile Field, Victoria & Albert Museum, London Design Festival 2011, UK
2011 Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow: sound design for documentary Exhibition through Collaboration, UK
2010 MIDI Music Festival, Beijing (M_d_P_h_N) installation/performance/sonic design
2010 Single as part of album Opposite House Vol.2, China

Auszeichnungen

2015 Arts Council grant, £9,200 for The Age of Digital / Analogue, UK
2013 Sky Academy Arts Scholarships, UK New York Festivals
2011 Gold World Medal for Television & Film Awards, USA
2011 Creative Review, September, Graduate special / One to watch, UK
2011 Creative Review, CR’s Pick of D&AD New Blood, UK
2011 Book, ThisisCentralStation.com, Glasgow, UK
2011 Digital Analogue showcased on Shanghai Dragon TV / Yunnan TV, China
2011 D&AD New Blood, Truman Brewery, London
2011 GSA Degree Show, Glasgow School of Art, UK
2011 Glasgow GSA Work in Progress Show, The Light House, Glasgow, UK
2010 Animation screening, Glasgow Short Film Festival, UK
2010 Animation screening, Brussels Short Film Festival, Belgium
2010 Animation screening, Geauga International Film Festival, USA

Ausbildung

2008-2011 BA (Hons) Visual Communication, Glasgow School of Art Glasgow, UK Grade: Upper Second-Class (Hons) Degree
2006-2007 Diploma in Foundation Studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, China Grade: Distinction

 

Vernissage: Friday, 20th April 2018, from 7 p.m.

Exhibtion period: Friday, 20th April to Friday, 1st June 2018

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Image caption: via Migrants Birds Space

Exhibtion Lu Sisi | [TAIKONAUT] – Migrant Bird Space | Contemporary Art ART at Berlin