Osage will be presenting the work of Shen Shaomin in Encounters, the section of Art Basel Hong Kong dedicated to large scale and installation works, curated by Yuko Hasegawa.

Encounters Section:

Presented will be I Touched the Voice of God, an installation consisting of pieces of rocket wreckage inlaid with scripture from the Book of Revelations in Braille. Resembling a futuristic site of disaster, the work expresses the limitations of mankind’s knowledge, despite our ambitions to uncover and challenge that which we do not understand. Man‐kind has made many attempts at conquering and marking unknown territories as our own, constantly expanding and erecting figurative and literal fences against the unexplainable. Yet, in the artist’s own words, when it comes to “envisaging the infinity of the universe, human beings are essentially blind”. The piece acts as a monument to the unknown, foretelling an ominous future.

Film Section:

Curated by Li Zhenhua, the Film sector consists of a dynamic programme of film and video at the agnes b. CINEMA. Osage will be presenting three works; Neighbour by Ishu Han, Space Drawing 07 by Chen Sai Hua Kuan and Disillusion by Miao Xiaochun.

Neighbour by Ishu Han is a video work that presents the contentious and perhaps hypocritical struggle of humanity as two toy tanks, connected by a sole battery gun from which neither may separate, are locked in a two‐step; when one moves forward, the other must move back, each dancing around the other.

Disillusion by Miao Xiaochun is an animated video that features figures depicted with simple, powerful lines and forms consisting of soap bubbles. Such imagery speaks to the teetering of humankind on the verge of permanence and brevity, bringing to the forefront the issue of our actions as men, while questioning the ideologies that we ascribe to. Drawing inspiration from classical imagery by artists including Hieronymous Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Dirk Bouts, Piedro della Francesca, Caspar David Friedrich, El Greco and Michelangelo, Miao also engages in re‐interpreting art historical narratives.

Chen Sai Hua Kuan’s Space Drawing 07 was filmed in an abandoned warehouse in the city centre of Limerick, Ireland in 2010 and follows the trajectory of a taut rope as it is released and ricochets across the dusty floors, through the rusty rollers of a conveyor belt, and in and out of the warehouse. The rope simultaneously delineates, sculpts and deconstructs the sites that it moves through. The work thus reinterprets the function of a line, extending the traditional two‐dimensional practice of drawing into a three‐dimensional spatial intervention that works across the borders between installation, drawing, performance, film and sculpture.

Image: © Ishu Han
Courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery