Weekend Exhibition | A Day of Healing at Xie Zilong Image Art Museum

If I went to exhibitions in the past to take nice photos, now when I go to exhibitions, I prefer to try to understand the works. In Changsha, Xie Zilon Image Art Museum has always been very popular. Despite the perceived temperature of 39°C, I went into the museum without hesitation.
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The exhibition that touched me the most was “Li Lang: The Third Time”, which exhibited six series of works by artist Li Lang, and was a comprehensive and phased summary and review of the artist’s creative career. Li Lang's video works use images obtained from photography to present the complex relationship with reality, as well as the exploration of the intersection of history, memory and society. In "30219 Days", Li Lang copied down the numbers of every day his father lived, a total of 30,219 days. These handwritten dates filled the paper and became the background color of the paper. On top of this, he superimposed his father's portrait and images of the objects his father used in his daily life. In the work, every day the father lived is no longer a brief dash on the tombstone, but emerges in full flesh and blood as his son copies it over and over again. What Li Lang wants to do is to restore "every day his father has lived in this world", so that his father can be transformed from an abstract person on the tombstone into a concrete person with a long life "days". In this chain of time, Li Lang superimposes images of portraits, bodies, objects, accessories and other images related to his father, the latter of which uses his father's body as the focus of his gaze. In the son's eyes, his father's body is full of marks of time. In this way, he expresses many complex contents such as time and emotion, perception and memory, existence and disappearance. In each of his works, Li Lang reconstructs his memories of his father, recalls the father-son relationship, and even feels the contact with his father's aging skin through the digital behavioral process of writing the 30,219 days of his "father's" life. The subtext is to caress the years, to caress "time". In fact, in such behavior processes and images, what makes us fall into contemplation is how much we know about "father", how many unknown past events are hidden in "father", and how much unknown pain has he endured. As the body passes away, all the past and unknown will gradually fade away, become blurred and finally disappear. In this process, I use my hands, my writing, and the tip of my pen to gently touch "father", to re-perceive "father", and to immerse past memories, regrets, unknowns, emotions, etc. in this process and this set of images. There is a painting that shows the money left by a father to his son. The total amount is more than 32,000 yuan, which corresponds exactly to 30,219 days. I immediately burst into tears. Time accumulated by numbers is ordinary but full of power. It is said that Jay Chou and Kun Ling also came to see this exhibition.
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【Check-in information】
Xie Zilong Image Art Museum
Tickets: There are free and paid exhibitions. "Li Lang: The Third Time" 50 yuan, postponed to September 1
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 10:00-18:30
Address: No. 387, Section 1, Xiaoxiang South Road, Yuelu District, Changsha
Transportation: Metro Line 3, Yanghu Wetland Exit 2

Post by RadiantCelest8 | Aug 14, 2024