Shifting Times, Moving Images IV: Lin Aojie

中文

Shifting Times, Moving Images IV: Lin Aojie
Solo Exhibition ShanghART Singapore, Singapore

Date: 09.11, 2021 - 10.31, 2021

Artists: LIN Aojie 林奥劼

Hours: Weekends, noon to evening; appointments in advance advised on other days
Address: 9 Lock Road, #02-22, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108937

Rounding up our series of screenings, ShanghART Singapore is happy to present Lin Aojie (b.1986) for the final instalment. Never shown before in Singapore, the audience will be introduced to this emerging artist through six of his video works that share his thoughts and ideas, as well as telling the personal stories of his artistic journey.

The youngest among the featured artists, Lin’s approach to video art differs vastly from his predecessors both in terms of conceptualisation and production. The integration of videography into our everyday lives through mass media and information technologies is captured by Lin through his approach, featuring several methods of video art creation and sometimes combining them. Present technology has made it possible that a single device is sufficient to create, record, and replay the video, entirely omitting the involvement of a camera in the process.

Such is the case in Who Can Persist Till The End, a work that consists of 108 frames of drawings created using a computer mouse. The images draw references from pop culture and motifs of the digital age, alongside inspirations from his own experiences and observations from the art world. Much of his work is rooted in personal experiences, with one of the most evident portrayals in Why I Want to Be an Artist, where he shares a conversation with a curator, allowing us a glimpse into the inner psyche of contemporary art practitioners through his own story, in his own words.

The selection of works examines the ecosystem of the art industry through the environments of striving arts professionals, relationships within the art world, and various ideologies in society. With this, the series of screenings draws to a close while raising questions on the perception of art, the current state of the art industry and the society, and the future directions we are facing, in a critical yet humorous manner.

About Artist
Lin Aojie was born in Guangzhou in 1986 and graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department in 2010. He currently lives and works in Guangzhou.

Presented through video, photography, painting, text, etc., Lin Aojie’s artistic practice departs from his personal experiences. The artist has a keen and delicate record of the trivial details of daily life or deliberately planned events with strongly improvisatory and humorous images, while a seemingly dispassionate tone threads the whole narrative structure. By beating around the bush, he tries to question, ridicule and criticize the capitalist mode of production, the artist's survival predicament and the relationship between artists and other art professionals.

Recent exhibitions include Lin Aojie: Designers Have A Future only When They Treat Artworks as Initial Inspiration, ShanghART Shanghai West Bund, Bldg.8 (2019); Very Natural Actions, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, China (2019); The Curation Workshop - Exhibition Curation and Design, OCT Art & Design Gallery, Shenzhen (2019); The 1st Airport Biennale, Airport Town, Guangzhou (2019); Light Pavillion Project: The Comfort Zone at a Distance, Taikang Space, Beijing (2018); Shared Narrative(s), ShanghART S-Space, Beijing (2018) etc. He was nominated for the 2016 Art Sanya Huayu Youth Award.