Organizer: Three Shadows +3 Gallery
Artist: Jin Shien
Duration: 26th Sep - 8th Nov, 2020 (Closed on Mondays)
Opening: 26th Sep, 2020
Location: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, 155A Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, Beijing
-Preface-
Jin Shien has a vision different from others. He takes serious photos of little bugs, dead fish, wasted sculpture in wilderness and a seal`s eye with disease and included all in his lens. He cares about some trivial facts, knowing the corpses of animals decay from their eyes, and telling the difference between the castor-oil plant and the Siberia cocklebur. These minor details seem insignificant, but have formed his knowledge structure. He abandons order regarding it not the necessities of life as we have assumed. He is not even interested in the meaning, at least not in a strong embrace, much less in search of it. In a relaxing and natural course, metaphors can find him. The absurdity is not an accident or a mistake to be corrected, for it is not a result but a cause. It's more like an instinct, an inclination of regarding these facts as important, which pushes him to keep some disgrace and be loyal to his own sensitivity. Being "too right" might deprive us of the imagination about life, treating the known answer as the only choice. We’d like to offer you a little chaos, to share an alternative version of the world, where the fragile is strong, the inferior is sacred, the death is tender and beautiful while the nonsense is sweet as honey. All is possible as long as we keep the absurdity.
Text: Baiyu Ren
Holding some absurdity in a container
He has travelled 64 cities.
A teenager has become a middle-aged man.
Vanity is like a flower worn by a teenager.
With time passes by, it has become despicable.
A kind of unfinished cruelty
is not knowing oneself.
In September, when success was possible one way or another,
the air attracted the attention of everything.
Even the water became dangerous.
The life jacket was under the seat,
waiting for someone to help himself.
Something serious needed to be done,
to contemplate how long is the future.
The one used to formality
decided not to progress in the coming month.
Metaphors in the language
of photography and comedy,
as well as love and supplication
in the express that soothed the South
are whimpering without discontent
The train drives through the universe.
In the lost aesthetic time
The desperation of pulling the trigger
makes the chaos fat,
and has cured the eye disease and the illogic.
Yet the overdrawn eyesight can’t be captured.
No ambition is the best romance,
like taking temperature of roses and painting the bones of springtime.
The stainless steel is like ice, smashing into the cat's soup.
A weak bird with white plumage, a land of excessive bleeding,
and a son-in-law with a soft thorn in his heart
are all consumed by the discord of language.
If the poem is not metaphorical,
If the Untitled is given a name,
let's seal some absurdity in a container.
When the spirit falls from the flesh,
and the sensitivity slides to the edge,
you'll find
making friend with
which middle-aged artist
is your own decision.
Jin Shien
2020.8.24
-About Artist-
Jin Shien
As an independent creator living in Beijing, Jin Shien often chooses video, graphic work and writing as major creation media. He was the photo director for For Him Magazine and other media in China. In 2016, he completed his transition from a fashion photographer to a creator. In the same year, he founded the image We Media "Flatland", and published albums such as Wild&Girls and Baby Flowers. His works have been exhibited in many museums and spaces at home and abroad.