When The Boat Is Sailing Into Island I Know No More Than What I Know Now
On September 26, from 17:00-20:00, Jin Jing (CN) and Liu Yuanyuan (CN) are holding a pop-up exhibition in Herðubreið’s gallery space, presenting the outcomes of their two-month residency at Skaftfell. Light refreshments will be available, and everyone is welcome.
Jin Jing works and lives in Xiamen, China. She holds two MFA degrees from Xiamen University and from the Sandberg Instituut, Netherlands. Apart from developing her individual artistic work she has co-founded Wallcode design studio and the JieShiWu art project which is engaged in artistic research and art project planning.
Jin Jing’s artistic practice focuses on the constant observation of her state of being and on questioning the real appearance of the “world”. Her photographs, videos and installations show the contradictions inherent in contemporary societies with a sense of humor, adopting a parallel view both as spectator and participant. Jin Jing’s works have been exhibited e.g. in Beijing Today Art Museum, De Appel Art Center, American Selby Art Gallery, and most recently at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen and its “Rolling Snowball” exhibition in Djúpivogur.
During her residency at Skaftfell, Jin Jing focused on capturing a kind of subtle awkwardness and sense of distance in the relationship between people and landscapes. Her installation “I Know No More Than What I Know Now” highlights the powerlessness and insignificance of humans, as well as the contradiction between instant and eternity.
“In these images the landscape has been flattened into a “tableau” without context, lacking a spatiotemporal axis. People and objects appear inside this “tableau”, but lack a narrative connection. In front of the absolute existence of nature, the position of human beings as the outlier is emphasized. An uneasiness emerges behind the seemingly orderly, as if somone or something has been landing on unknown land. This appearance of human presence is an instant, an instant that can be completely ignored by nature.” Jin Jing
Liu Yuanyuan lives and works in Xiamen, China. She is a visual artist, fashion buyer, designer, and founder. She graduated from Xiamen University with a Bachelor of Fine Art. Her works have been exhibited most recently at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen and its “Rolling Snowball” exhibition in Djúpivogur.
Liu Yuanyuan’s artistic practice concentrates on developing a self-consistent creation system, the “Bottle Theory”. She describes this system as an analytical methodology, using abstraction, deconstruction, geometrical structures and shadow zones to explore deconstructed space, interspace, and emptiness. The core concept of the Bottle Theory is meaninglessness. In extension, Liu also developed the “Bottle Language” based on streams of consciousness.
At the end of her residency at Skaftfell, Liu Yuanyuan presents an installation that uses the Bottle Theory and the Bottle Language to analyze landscapes throughout Iceland. She is reading them as a kind of rhythm and underlying invisible order, and describes these landscapes as an “infinite form of consciousness”, and as “perceptible and visible memory”.
“Reality does not exist in concrete matter but in the connection points of structures. It is an order that still exists in dismantled matter. When I stayed deep inside the Icelandic landscapes, I perceived an infinite form of consciousness. These landscapes are perceptible and visible memory. They are constructed by pasted experiences of the spatiotemporal, and are constantly regenerating. The true self detached from the substance and assimilated with the spatiotemporal when I was staring at these landscapes for a long time. Thus, its sphere of consciousness appears and the invisible content is presented. I am getting more and more closer to the Bottle World.” Liu Yuanyuan
