10.15.2005

House of Oracles

Amerigo Vespucci (2003)

The first ever retrospective of works by Chinese-born, Paris-based artist Huang Yong Ping opens at the Walker tomorrow. Called House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, it's an exciting show, for me anyway, because it combines Eastern philosophy with Western avant-garde practices, intricate nuanced works with incredible large-scale sculptures, meditative pieces with work critical of global superpowers: a harbinger of colonialism's end in the form of a two-ton elephant attacked by a tiger; an E-3 spy plane partially reconstructed in the gallery, a gladiatorial arena for live bugs and lizards; recently occupied lion cages (marked with signs seen at passport control at the airport); a giant sandcastle shaped like the former Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building, and more.

11 June 2002–The Nightmare of George V (2002)

Bank of Sand, Sand of Bank (2000/2005)

No comments: