“Facing such a sticky world, I can’t live effectively from a macro perspective without concerning the specific question. So I'm trying to find a way, which can consistently measure the density of a specific part of the daily air. By diluting or cutting the air into several ideological shaped pieces, I can piece them together to a cognitive flat surface in order to help myself comprehend these detailed problems.”


Jin Yanan graduated from China Academy of Art (Hangzhou), Department of Sculpture with the Master’s degree in 2012. Currently he works and lives in Hangzhou. Compared to the video installations he made in the last few years, the recent works of Jin Yanan focus on the actual state reflected by the shape of the material: Could it provide a powerful framework for thinking? Or stay sensitive to different mediums? The artist is trying to find out where the critical point is. Then he suspends it for a while, giving his imagination a potential creation space and allowing time to develop the state of the works.

From 2009 to the present, Jin Yanan has been accumulating and sorting out the creative materials in the daily life and trying to stabilize them. Both exhibited works “The Air on the Mountaintop is Thin and Tenuous, the World at the Foot of the Mountain is as Heavy as Aluminium, Nothing Can Pierce Through.” and “The Status of Tube“ belong to the installations which are developed after a long time. In his view, the works explore the existence state in a society and how an individual feels detached in a collective, thinking about his own weight and supports of others. While for human this suspended state reflects the ideological intervention in the daily life. In the state of life with the collective consciousness we unconsciously leave traces of little actions we’ve made. They are exposed or still hidden around us. These actions are designed to change the aura around each person and the shape of each individual. Meanwhile, they imply the effective control of the passive behavior by the controllers and their confidence to do so.

Jin Yanan has participated in the project “Spring Outing”. For this project he and other artists developed an impromptu rule of the game, under which they interact with the public environment, implying different situations of each person within a group.