Yuan Keru

  • Yuan Keru Realms of Memory Photography, as a transcription tool of memory, has the dual properties of reliability and deception,...

    Yuan Keru

    Realms of Memory

     

    Photography, as a transcription tool of memory, has the dual properties of reliability and deception, just like the ambiguity and deformation of human memory itself. Disease is the "Punctum" of Yuan Keru's memory. The metaphor of disease pervades Yuan's creation, resembling our ways of life in reality. She explores time, space, family, society, ethics, politics and other issues through individual narratives of disease. As John Berger said, "There is never a single approach to something remembered. The remembered is not like a terminus at the end of a line. Numerous approaches or stimuli converge upon it and lead to it. Words, comparisons, signs need to create a context for a printed photograph; that is to say, they must mark and leave open diverse approaches. A radial system has to be constructed around the photograph so that it may be seen in terms which are simultaneously personal, political, economic, dramatic, everyday and historic.”
     
    This exhibition features video and photography works created by the artist, Eternity and Transience and Guest of the Mist 2037.
     
    Eternity and Transience presents research that sets out from Yuan Keru's family history of Hepatitis B. Hepatitis B once had a large population base in China and was subject to a great deal of media coverage, but was long without a voice in the cultural sphere. Starting from her personal experience, the artist probes the matter from an aesthetic perspective. The artwork consists of three screens and uses three people as archetypes. Each of them takes a short walk by the sea, where they describe their regret, anger, or reconciliation. Eventually, the hidden individual narratives converge into a collective statement of a community.
     
    Inspired by José Saramago's novel Blindness, Guest of the Mist 2037 tells a realistic science fiction story that takes place in a parallel world. The artist enlisted ten non-professional actors, all of them blind and hailing from different professions. While creating fictional characters, they also introduced some real physical experiences of the visually impaired into the film, looking for a way to express freely and overcome the contradiction between the visible and the invisible.

     

    In her photographic works, Yuan makes full use of the fictional nature of photos and materializes old photos and stills. She links their materiality with certain characteristics of the film's scene (disease) to form a new tension and narrative, setting photography in the conflicts between reality and virtuality, opinion and interpretation.

     

    The works on display are all based on real diseases as the meta-narrative. Yuan uses literary fiction and scene construction to present memories in different scenes, grafting fictional stories into "artificial" space. The narrative of space emphasizes the will of human beings and their memories, trying to capture the frailty of modern civilization and the predicament of human beings through memories.

  • ARITST: Yuan Keru Born in 1990 in Hangzhou, Yuan Keru graduated from School of Inter Media Art, China Academy of...

    ARITST: Yuan Keru

     

    Born in 1990 in Hangzhou, Yuan Keru graduated from School of Inter Media Art, China Academy of Art with an MFA in 2016, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Yuan’s practice focuses on exploring the painterly quality, spatial rhythm and narratives of video, combining the on-going events, emotions with history, mythology, dreams and so on. She uses narrative films to present the plight of individuals in different sections in the history.

     

    She was nominated for the AAC Award of Art China (2018); nominated for the Huayu Youth Award of Art Sanya (2014); invited to speak in the panel “The Diamond Generation” moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Art Basel Hong Kong (2013); participated in the Film sector at Art Basel Hong Kong (2016/2018), and her work was featured on the cover of the literary magazine “Chutzpah!”, of the 16th issue. Her recent solo exhibitions and projects includes: “Traces of Afterimage” , SPURS Gallery; CEF Digital Archive vol.12: Yuan Keru, Addiction, Ghost and Destiny; “NEBULA 5 SPACE”, Sifang Art Museum; “Pooling > Pixelated Dream”, TANK Shanghai; “Moon and Sixpence”, ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chǎng, West Bund Art & Design; “Fleeting Strangers”, Leo Gallery; “The Symposium”, screening at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Her recent group exhibitions includes: Song Art Museum, By Art Matters Residency, OCAT Shenzhen, Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Surplus Space, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Mocube, Beijing Contemporary Art Expo, Auckland art fair, International artists in the Fabric Factory(Wuppertal), Alt Space LOOP(Seoul), Asia Now Paris, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, M21, Helsinki Festival, MOMENTUM(Berlin), Photo Shanghai, etc. 

  • CURATOR: Tutu Zhu Writer, curator, cultural scholar, PhD candidate of art philosophy at Fudan University, graduated with an MA in...

    CURATOR: Tutu Zhu

     

    Writer, curator, cultural scholar, PhD candidate of art philosophy at Fudan University, graduated with an MA in Art Curating and Criticism from Central Saint Martins, London. She is the author of books such as “Everything is Joyful”, “The World is Never Silent”, “People Will Look Good in an Art Museum”, and “Letters from Yu”, and translations of “Claptrap”, “Renaissance People”, and “Simplicity is Like a Photograph”. She hosts and produces “ZHU’s life in Britain”, a short cultural video series, for which she was awarded the title of "VisitBritain China Social Media Influencer Ambassador" by Christina Scott, Minister and Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Beijing in November 2018; As a curator and art critic, she has curated group exhibitions and solo exhibitions of women's art such as "Future Exodus", "A Room of One's Own II" and "Metaphor and Gaze". She hosts the art podcast "Art Fold" on the App of KanLiXiang and Himalaya platform; she is a columnist to the New Weekly art column "Art Break Rules"; she is a member of the New Weekly Art Book Promotion Committee and an art consultant for CITIC Publishing Shang Hai.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Guest of The Mist 2037, 2021. Single-channel video, 24’38”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Guest of The Mist 2037, 2021. Single-channel video, 24’38”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Guest of The Mist 2037, 2021. Single-channel video, 24’38”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Guest of The Mist 2037, 2021. Single-channel video, 24’38”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Eternity and Transience, 2021. 3-channel video, 22’37”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Eternity and Transience, 2021. 3-channel video, 22’37”. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Yuan Keru, Still from Eternity and Transience, 2021. 3-channel video, 22’37”. Courtesy of the artist.