Dozens of Days and Dozens of Years

Reception: Saturday, 20 Oct., 2007, 6-8 pm
Concluding Reception: Tuesday, 20 Nov., 2007, 6-8 pm

Hu Jieming is one of the pioneering artists of digital media and video installation art in today's China. One of his main focuses is the co-existence of the old and the new, a theme he constantly comments upon and questions with a variety of media including photography, video, digital interactive technology and architectural juxtapositions with musical comments. The works always signify the artist's strong engagement with both history and the present reality.
The new installation pieces Dozens of Days and Dozens of Years (2007) directly comment on how the recent philosophy of economic growth and advanced consumption dramatically change and erase old things. The installation consists of six glass cabinets displaying a set of furniture pieces that have been washed with a special chemical liquid. Each day the chemicals aggressively and increasingly change the structure and form of the furniture. Placed next to each cabinet there will be photographic documentation showing the dissolution and destruction accumulating day by day. During the course of the exhibition, an electric screen will account the number of days already past.
As in Hu Jieming's other installations, these real concrete objects are never as simple as they appear. Dozens of Days and Dozens of Years subtly comments on the fundamental changes of China's political and economic system. Changes that have generated unprecedented economic growth and advanced consumption. Rendered irrelevant by the culture that outmodes products as quickly as they come into being, these furniture pieces display their own dissolution and mortification. Or, with the famous quote by Karl Marx: "Everything solid melts into air".