清影

In the first episode of Artists Interview Artists, Alex Gibbs goes to Hangzhou, China to interview the artist Alex Gibbs in his studio. They discuss the artist's current paintings and the important role that public toilet experiences and other social situations play within them. The conversation took place in June 2014.

“A Bunch of Paintings” represents certain of my recent enquiries into the relationship between artistic practice and communication, at the same time parodying those things it is impossible for me to express through work alone. 

It’s so welcoming, this desolate mountain scene, this fenced path, channelling the gaze, concealing for the most part any extremes of contour. When I sit quietly and focus on it however, in my imagination there arises a limitlessness, one of far of places, this and an inhuman quiet, a solitude so unparalleled it fills me with a sort of dread. When I hear the rustling of the wind between leaves, I compare its sound with the remoteness and recollect eternity, all those moments passed, the present, their chatter …  All notion drowns in this limitless — How serene the boat that sinks into such a sea!

I do not choose to take my person as a means to resist the outside, here, I attempt rather to return to the inner mechanisms of photography, to the acts of photographing and of editing, rupturing these images to illicit from them a completely novel aspect, taking certain of my own perceptual insights and projecting these into the context of an ever-changing present. When a plain yet genial face is subject to overzealous editing, it becomes impossible for its image to ever return to being simply a portrait in the initial sense. Instead it becomes a new sort of gesture, one of novel significances, the result of which is itself a kind of new portrait. Subject to the majority of circumstances, are we as individuals ever not exposed to just such overzealous editing?

In  the  fantastical  space  fully  colored  with  ideology,  the  glamorously  gorgeous  outerwear  of  modern  industry  was  exhibited  and  the  utopian  ideal  that hypnotizing the society was filled. However, the ethnic communities were separated from politics, which has certain unspeakable rules and constrains. From the

indifferent  public,  literary  mass  movements,  and  crazily  raised  and  dropped  scaffold,  the  history  always  welds  the  seemingly  opposite  times  with  negative  forms. We imagine that we will have new birth. But, can we obtain the real freedom from violence and metempsychosis?

The world only becomes more corrupt because we continue to acknowledge the strong, ascribing to them our illustrious causes. The spectator looks on expectantly at this tiger-like pursuit as the protagonist themselves takes it as their life’s arena.  

Having been partially “flayed” (its image selectively peeled away) a large, illuminated advertisement billboard of the kind one sees inside metro stations is provided with new captions and imagery. Due to the effect of this intervention on the film of the transparency’s image, the final effect is one of latticing. 

Prime numbers, divisible only by one and themselves. Offer yourself up to the prime numbers. 

A group of seemingly mentally retarded professional security guards plays around in the garden of a residential compound. The video does not have a narrative. It records an ambiance and conveys its sensitivities, and the artist attempts to convey his own consciousness through manipulating those of the security guards.

This work made by infrared camera,it’s a devise that forms an image using infrared radiation , similar to a common camera that forms an image using visible light.Under this temperature sensing mechanical eyes , substance & flesh , true &false , life & death , invasive & fusion , separation , disappear , just like a magic mirror , the body without souls became physical object , the lost part of body is reality , cold blooded swallowed the warm blooded animals , foreign matter dumped into the life , living things keep their alive via matters and other lives , you can kill part of your body just tie up it , let it disappeared under this sensing mechanical eyes , blood just a matter once leave the flesh body like energy and power out , killing is a way of release energy to stop life .

 CAUTION:

All animal clips and human body dissection clips are onsite recordings or medical experiments. no living beings were hurt for the making of this work.

Infrared camera is a device that forms an image using infrared radiation , the subject’s original appearance can’t be recognized through the infrared camera

Special thanks to : Tombsound

Revolving Tomb from < Never Ending >

This is an avatar created for me by a friend who plays World of Warcraft. 

Assuming the role of independent journalists, San Xian TV followed international artist Blue for the duration of a week long detainment, documenting the processes of day to day life and artistic practice as these took place in the detention facility, revealing everyday life there to be both interesting and compelling in the process. 

When the universe is reduced to a cube as its model or unit, there happens to be a line outside of it, aligning to its decomposition and regeneration, like the skin of a lime fruit with myriad pores of essential oil that smells stronger than the pulp, or the residues in a lime mine that can stick and can dissipate. Is it the all and the one, or the single and the none?

“Twelve Scenes” is an experimental work I conceived this year in collaboration with my daughter Wang Zi. It was in January of 2010 that God gave me this angelic daughter. In 2014, I took her with me to Guizhou for Chinese New Year. During our trip she took out pen and paper to mimic her adult companion in composing a travel journal. It was most endearing, the way she made such a tome out of her private musings, albeit these remained quite incomprehensible to anyone but her. Thinking back, she’d been writing like this for about six months by then.

For the work “Twelve Scenes” I selected twelve photographic images, many of which related to death in some way, allowing Wang Zi to write on each. In my opinion, this scrawl itself represents a sort of renewal, a rebirthing. It also resembles a peculiar sort of symbolic writing, allusively meaningful some how, working to transport the images to an unspecified and far-off place.

Rebirth is an origin for metamorphoses, an entrance to other realms, a border-post.

Its definition lies in the instant one departs from ones former circumstance and enters into some place new.

It is a means to look for liberation, or for truth.

The process of rebirth is at once also that of a search for resolution, for a final place of lodging.

A discarded pool table, sinks inclined downwards into a patch of waste ground. In subterranean shadows, there arises an unfathomable, vital force. Yet the pool table has already begun to decay, becoming one gradually with the earth. It rests upon the globe amid the shifting of the seasons, the intermeshing of species, time’s sedimenting, space’s reconfiguring, all these things, all working to accelerate its disintegration.

Like an old grave, where above ground there are the symbols of a present society, its space, its time, in the corresponding place below ground, there lies another, unknown dimension, enticing, indefinite. The table intersects both upper and lower realms and is dissolved gradually between their substrates, dissipating into nothingness. 

The installation consists of severallow-frequency speakers, each one beingpairedwith a laser transmitter. The speakers are all loopsplaying a variety of simple, boringpieces of mechanical noise. By using the soundprinciples of the speaker, itsdiaphragmcontinuouslymakes the laser transmittersplaced on the surface of the speaker vibrate. And the transmitters, following the irregular impulses keepchanging the projection direction. So that the red laser beams are dancing in the darkspace,cutting the wall, floor, roof, and even the body of the audience who enter thisspace.

The creation of this video is based on the connection of our daily life with newspapers’ information. All sorts of matter keep happening every day, volume of the information is enormous. Most of them are soon forgotten, the remains might then be something that interests you, yet unable to determine how many percentage of truth lies within. I randomly selected some keywords or sentences from a piece of news and then dislocated and re-organised them. With the low whispering-like reading of the performer, I created a powerless field; performer’s ridiculous movement might be the epitome of society. Words are added to the objects in this video, attach aggressiveness to the interpretation. News, from my point of view, perhaps is similar to interpreting a daily stuff. Multi perspectives are applied to accomplish the

narrative structure.