trace, line, shadows

ifa gallery is pleased to present the exhibition “trace, line, shadows” curated by Alexis Kouzmine-Karavaieff.

What do we leave behind us? What is left behind for us?

Whatever you do for yourself or others right now will have an impact, be it today, tomorrow or even yesterday. Whatever you are drawing at Time “T” is read and interpreted at “T+1”. What happened at “T”, can also be revisited at “T-1” with a different insight. Events, places, things and people become evolving history or History.

Time, whether it is still or moving, is the common denominator of the collection of artworks by Dai Guangyu, Zane Mellupe, Wu Junyong in “Trace, Line, Shadow”.

Dai Guangyu leaves behind an evolving trace, drawing fading characters with ink on the icy lakes of Beijing. For him it is “the physical evidence of time in occasions [which is] the questioning of life, existence and meaning in the context of time”

Zane Mellupe reproduces the still frames of her film on steel structures, as a work of art made to be practical and useful.  But the viewer is also required to provide the tempo, the speed of time, of the film sequence. “The steps behind him made a continuous mark called Line, but maybe a Lion”, she writes. Do we have to look back?

Wu Junyong is representing shadows of our minds, our unconscious or, not. These dark scenes represented in his mixed media works are “the world of shadow […], which is the projection of a dark community”.

The exhibition at ifa gallery aims to provoke the viewer into pondering the events of time, as a consequence of our minds and one of our contemporary world community.

Alexis Kouzmine-Karavaieff, ifa gallery director

Shanghai, february 2012