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Manling Xue
Time Spider
IS A SHOW
Apr 17–Apr 19, 2021

In the past, archaeologists relied mainly on the human sciences of documentation and chronology to date the remains of ancient man. The advent of new technologies has renewed the archaeological tools to piece together and add to a clear chronicle of the Earth by dating the relative or absolute age of those ancient materials through the determination of reflective elements in rocks and new elements produced by decay. At the same time, modern techniques of modification and synthesis have made laboratory products and man-made elements the best alternatives to ancient natural mineral resources.

The exhibition attempts to visualize the concept of “laboratory time” or “unnatural time” by considering fragments of stratigraphic minerals and their cross-sectional patterns as figurative objects of (earth) time, reconstructing or blurring their boundaries by combining synthetic techniques with external means of purification techniques.

"It explores with a single command—a complex and large figure—and moves endlessly through this strange and uncharted territory."

The main presentation of the exhibition, Time Spider (2021), is an unfinished, ongoing project whose concept stems from the artist's thoughts on time since 2018: how will things be linked and creatively active in the future, and will the shape of time be reshaped in the future?

This exhibition attempts to respond to how humans can be inspired by the ever-emerging new technologies and media with a non-human perspective. In addition to photographing mineral specimens and recording the state of fluorescence under long and short-wave ultraviolet light respectively, the work also experiments with 3D scanning techniques, post-processing and recreating the data, translating it into other image forms. In these processes, an attempt is made to fantasise a future form that stretches out in all directions like a spider: natural irregular structures and violent forms are interspersed with structures to form a new, unknown elastic composite of closed forms.

过去的考古工作者主要依靠文献记载和年历学的人文科学研究,从古代人类遗留下来的遗迹进行断代。新型科技的出现更新了考古手段,通过对岩石中的反射性元素和衰变产生的新元素的测定,推测出那些古老物质的相对年代或绝对年代,拼凑及补充一部清晰的地球编年史。同时,通过现代技术的改造和合成,也使冰冷的实验室产物和人造元素成为工业化中古老的自然矿资源的最佳替代物。

本展览试图将地层矿物的碎片和其截面纹路视作为(地球)时间的具象化之物,结合人工合成技术与提纯技法的外界手段,重构或模糊其边界,视觉性地呈现“实验室时间”或“非自然时间”的概念。

 “它带着唯一的指令──“一个复杂而庞大的人物”──探索,在这片陌生未知领域中无尽前行。”

作为展览的主要呈现,《时间蜘蛛》(2021)是一个未完成、一直进行中的项目,其概念源于艺术家自2018年起对时间的思考:未来的物与物之间如何进行链接和创造性活动,时间的形状在未来是否会被重塑?

 本展览尝试以一种非人的视角下去回应人类如何在不断涌现的新技术和媒介激发的更多可能。作品主要通过对矿物标本进行拍摄、分别记录长波短波紫外线下荧光状态等手段之外,还尝试了3D扫描技术,对数据进行后期的处理和再创造,将数据转译成其他图像形式。在这些过程中,试图幻想一种未来的形态,如蜘蛛一般向四周伸展:自然非规则的结构和暴力的形态进行结构的交错穿插,形成一种新的、未知的封闭形态的弹性复合体。

Installation view of Time Spider, 2021
Organizer
IS A GALLERY
Host
Interviewer
Photographer
Manling Xue
Designer
Tianyi Wang
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