Sun Xun: Parallel Circus

中文

Sun Xun: Parallel Circus
Solo Exhibition TANK Shanghai, Shanghai

Date: 03.09, 2024 - 07.14, 2024

Artists: SUN Xun 孙逊

Sun Xun's solo exhibition "Parallel Circus" opened on 9 March at TANK Shanghai, featuring Sun's latest short animated video work Shocking Dreams in the Circus, a fantasy land made of oil paintings, together with the creative manuscripts and original large-scale oil paintings related to the video.

"Shocking Dreams in the Circus"
The short film Shocking Dreams in the Circus tells an absurd dialogue between a letter from a different time and space and various animals in the circus. In the film's setting, there is no real dialogue process, and the animals in the film seem to possess human behavior and thinking abilities, while the scenes and actions of the people in the frame become absurd and strange. The two seem to interchange or become equal, losing boundaries...

Facing the vast expanse of reality and the infinite depths of time and space, human stories seem to be shrinking infinitely, becoming small and insignificant. In the detachment of reality, history collapses... especially in recent years with the global bacterial catastrophe, humanity has momentarily become like a circus. For anyone's life, tomorrow is the projection of today, and yesterday is the projection of today, the day before yesterday is the projection of yesterday, constantly retracing until the source of life, conversely reaching the end of life... Which moment is the complete self? It seems that time and space are just shadows of shadows of shadows... in the vastness of its boundless time and space, meaning loses its meaning, neither big nor small, neither short nor long, neither curved nor straight, neither soft nor hard, neither thick nor thin, neither round nor square... Only that wordless letter in the film is the true entirety!

"Shocking Dreams in the Circus" is loosely related to Sun Xun's "Magic of Atlas", an ambitious animation project Sun Xun began in 2019.

About Sun Xun

Sun Xun was born in 1980 in Fuxin in Liaoning province, China. He graduated in 2005 from the Print-making Department of the China Academy of Art. In 2006 he established π Animation Studio. He currently lives and works in Beijing.

As an artist, Sun Xun’s works were collected by many art institutions, including White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, M+ Museum, etc. While participating in art exhibitions extensively, Sun Xun has performed special screenings at Hong Kong International Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Holland Animation Film Festival, etc. He was also nominated for Venice International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival respectively in 2010 and 2011.