Repository Number
en-ca SC0375-YXI-SC-1
Location
en-ca Newnham - Building A - Level 2 - Stairwell towards Level 1
Artist
Title
en-ca Cloudscape
Date
en-ca 2009
Medium
en-ca Sculpture
Technique
en-ca Paper
en-ca Natural Reed
Dimensions
en-ca Impossible to measure due to its location
Artist's Statement
en-ca “I have become increasingly interested in cultural and personal identity and in the need to discover a new mode of artistic and social intercourse that blends Chinese and Western ways of thinking. As an immigrant artist, both my identity and my work pass through the complex filters of different countries, languages, and cultural expectations. In my art, every idea travels through the intricate passageway of how I think in Chinese, but speak in English. In an effort to shape myself, I take traditional Chinese materials and techniques and reinvent them within a Western aesthetic and presentation.”

“In these paper sculptures, I further my exploration of sculpture forms whose meaning is interwoven with the materials from which they are made. The traditional Chinese auspicious cloud pattern were reinterpreted constructed in three dimensional forms using paper and reed, which were inspired from the traditional techniques of kite and lantern making. This elaborate installation work evokes Chinese landscape painting as it soars and floats through space. Three colours depicting water transforming into cloud. The lightweight materials define not only shape, space and volume, but also the tradition where I came from. The contradiction of fragility and strength relate the state of the immigrant life. These forms are simple in their material restraint yet complex in their geometry, pliable in their porous and translucent delicacy yet possessing of tensile, internal strength.”
en-ca World of Threads Festival
Provenance
en-ca Purchased from the Lonsdale Gallery.
Inscription
en-ca No signature
Conservation & Condition
en-ca Not framed. To monitor | many piece show break or tear (6 at least) Paper seems to unbound from the structure or have tears in it. Good condition, clean and intact assumed stable | Installed too high for closer examination | 6 pieces out of the 18 components show minor tears or detachment of paper to the support.
Item sets