down the rabbit hole – white rabbit gallery sydney
taking the last opportunity to see down the rabbit hole, i went to the white rabbit gallery in sydney this sunday.
the white rabbit gallery is a private art collection of the greater chinese area that opened not until 2009. ‘intuitive,’ would circumscribe the selection criteria for acquisition, presentation and hanging. the latter mirror the personal taste of judith neilson, the gallery director and owner, which makes the display very honest and with it successful.
consequently, the aesthetic arrangement of michael lin’s (*1964, taiwan) untitled gathering (2008) on the top floor matched the pure redesign of the four storey former warehouse by sydney based smart design studio in 2008. lin’s 320 children wooden stools painted in his famous floral designs, contrasted with the brightness of the gallery cube. as i got informed, lin sent a photograph with an installation advice of the jigsaw that evokes traditional sliding puzzle games. the curators and assistants must have recalled their childhood, while playfully arranging the final product.
leaving the pent-etage through the elevator as there are no stairs, i dived further into several inspiring installations that embrace technology in its various assets. luxury logico’s scripting (2011), a group consisting of chang kenghau, chang genghwa, llunc lin (*1980, taiwan) and ken chenchen (*1979, taiwan), brought ‘dan flavin pipes’ into mind that performed a modern dance. the fluorescent tubes became marionettes on strings directed by a computer script, which is composed by the artists. the multi-directional approach ‘behind the scenes,’ mirrors the current trends of transdisciplinarity in technological progression. unexpectedly on the other hand, liao yuan’s (*1989, hangzhou) insomnia series n° 1-4 (2010) transformed the natural into an artificial suggestion. photographing the moon in high exposure, the planetoid left a stroke in the sky instead of a curve, resembling precisely the shining tubular lamps.
not far away, tu wei-cheng’s (*1969, taiwan) bu num civilisation revealed (2011) perpetuated the virtual realm into a frieze, eternalizing the shapes of our technological development in stone. the latter shared the room with song hongquan’s (*1977, baoding city) after the stone age (2011) in a compelling juxtaposition of artifacts that encompassed the digging and carving aspects of history and histories. like a shadow on the wall, history remains an allusion of images in wu chi-tsung (*1981, taiwan) wire IV (2009). the projection of landscapes could imply chinese scrolls. moreover, the scenes embrace the individuality of perception, leaving the interpretation to the spectactor’s acquired mindset. zooming in and out, the artist exposed the technical equipment to the audience. as if in plato’s allegory of the cave the hidden object of desire revealed as a thin layer of wire sheet, illuminated by the machine and transformed into a moving image by uncoated lenses. shifting from micro to macro, the wire pictured visions of poetic landscapes and their microscopic scientific potentials onto the screen.
the white rabbit gallery is closed until the end of august and i look forward to the upcoming compilation of taste.
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