Beijing Commune is pleased to announce the opening of Lu Yang’s first solo exhibition “Lu Yang Delusional Mandala” at the gallery on September 24th, 2015. The exhibition will continue until November 3rd, 2015.
Lu Yang has gained acclaim for her work in new media art. She is adept at creating cross-medium pieces that leverage video, installation, animation, photography, and video games, in order to explore the meaning of life as well as question its very existence. In her artistic explorations, LU has mixed elements from diverse disciplines such as biology, neurology, medicine, and theology and arranged them into her unique system of aesthetics. This solo exhibit is an extension of Lu’s primary creative concepts and makes use of familiar elements, traversing between the disciplines of religion and neuroscience, and constructing a clear and central thread that winds through her entire body of work.
Lu’s latest piece, Moving Gods, continues to focus on religious subject matters. This interactive media installation redefines the concept of the nimbus. The artist references religious iconography from Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, Shingon Buddhism, and Christianity to create a hand carved and painted camphor wood nimbus, on which she installed wearable brocade security vests and safety belts. To most religions, the nimbus is a visible sign that differentiates holiness from the ordinary. International models of varying figures stand in front of exquisitely carved flame patterns wearing these custom-made nimbuses, posing an interesting juxtaposition that breaks the conventional localized idolatry that is unique to each religion with its regional spheres of influence, and creates fully mobile new gods in the flesh. Lu isolates the nimbus, which is part of an integrated concept of sacredness, and removes it from the full package, and reproduces them like warriors’ armors, which she bestows on common people. This “sabotage” of religious icons overthrows the fundamental spiritual message that is instilled into such images, and leaves open a door for the viewer to worship his fellow man.
The other new piece in the exhibit hall, Lu Yang Delusional Mandala, is a digitized and asexual humanoid creation that was based on herself. Lu uses her own body as the starting point to this piece, and applies the neurological concepts of stereotactic mapping, stimulating her brain with deep brain stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation to map out her cerebral limbic system; by subjectively introducing religious imagery and thoughts revolving the physical world’s impermanence, Lu successfully induces a delusion. The dark exhibition space is dotted with transparent crystal objects that showcase the modeling efforts that led to the final piece, leveraging crystal’s energy-absorbing and magnetic-field-altering properties. This piece reflects an introspection to Lu’s past, present, and future artwork and inspirations. Thought the making of this device of delusion, Lu simulates a comprehensive destruction of her body and work, in order to reflect upon the human consciousness and the connection between that consciousness and the human brain.
The pieces shown in this exhibit represent Lu’s effort to contrast and build upon her past work. Through a variety of methods of subtle visualization and meditation, Lu constructs a delusional mandala that is truly unique to herself. Her meticulous control of images in this post-internet age, manifested through a diverse repertoire of expressive techniques, help showcase Lu’s collected and tactful ponderings on science, religion, and the eternal philosophical explorations of life and death.
Lu Yang was born in 1984 in Shanghai, China. She received her MFA in New Media Art department in the China Academy of Art in 2010. She currently lives and works in Beijing and Shanghai. Her works have been featured in many museums and institutes, such as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2011); Minsheng Museum of Art (Shanghai, 2011); Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2012); CAFA Art Museum (Beijing, 2012); Guangdong Museum of Art (2012); Contemporary Arts Museum Huston（2012）; Tampa Museum of Art (2014); Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (Florida, U.S. 2014); Stavanger Art Museum (Norway, 2014); Museum Fridericianum（Kassel, 2015）;Orange County Museum of Art (2015); OK Corral & Science Friction（Denmark, 2015） and so on. Her recent important exhibitions include “Reactivation – Shanghai Biennale” (2012); The 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2014); The 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014); etc. Lu Yang has been nominated for the Pierre Huber Prize (2014). She is participating in the 56th Venice Biennale - China Pavilion now. Her works are going to be shown at Moscow Biennale and Wesleyan University Center for the Arts. Her works have been collected by Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
