J+J guide book.

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OVERTURETAI CHI
HU JIEMING

05/09

07/26

OVERTURE

08/08 11/28

TAI CHI

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800

30

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05/09 - 07/26

Overtures

2 01 4

As the first half of this solo show,

t h e p roj e c te d i m a g e s o f O ve r t u re
are emb e dde d in t he crev ices and
fissures of the walls on three sides
of the exhibition venue. The audience
must move their bodies to make the
g e s t u re of p e e p i n g t h ro u g h t h e s e
frames, where they they can find that
t he subje c t in mos t of t he images
revolves around human body, and is
juxtaposed with some others depicted
on historical events. The dim rays of
light from the fissures surrounds the
audiences, the artist referring to it as
the aura of Tai Chi, which provides
an immersive environment in which
to rethink the enigmatic relationship
between image, truth, and narrative.
The earliest description of imager y
of this kind appeared in Book VII of
Platos Republic , where the renowned
thinker proposed that the shadows
that the occupants of a cave see are
deceptive; the truth lies outside the
cave and is brought back from there by
a narrator whoneedless to saycan
never generate a completely persuasive
depiction of that truth. Hu Jiemings
Over ture unset tles the relationship
between spectacle and falsehood, thus
providing with a fulcrum for intellectual
contemplation through these hundreds
of moving images.
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08/08 - 11/28

Ta i C h i

2 01 4

Hu Jiemings kinetic installation, Tai

Chi , is presented in the second half

of the exhibition. This ar tifact is as

108

large as life, combining mechanical

techniques and those of remote

interaction, resembling a skeleton-like

creature. Hu installed 108 projectors

directly onto the body of the artwork,

while some of the digitally rendered

visual materials are beamed onto

the other end of the limbs made to

resemble bones; by bringing signifier

(the beamer) and signified (the

surface) close together, Hu doesnt

intend to make Tai Chi a well-developed

mechanism of communication. What is

at stake is that it becomes a more or

less obscure self-referential system,

providing a different atmosphere in
which to view the images compared to

Overture s, and that Hus gesture of

juxtaposing the analogical limbs with
the digital images points to the notion
of medialit y, drif ting away from an
understanding of it as cutting- edge
into a contemplation that goes beyond
merely a sense of contemporaneity.

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