Boers-Li Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Fang Lu, featuring her newest work Cinema and an earlier work from 2006, Bump 'n Grind.

Unlike her previous works, which duel more on the internal, surrealistic human conditions, this new seven-channel work elevates the individual relationship with its environment to a more recognizable and appealing set of behavioural actions of self-awareness and self-inflicted anguish. Cinema, as a "portrait", staged in the fashion of creating a self-image in the guarded societal arena of surveillance. In this media oriented process of constructing a self-image, one experiences over time the loss of one's, authentic, identity. In that sense Cinema is a "melancholic" portrait.

Similarly, the dancing couples in Bump 'n Grind are also obseved by a third party; but unlike the acting stance of the actress in the theater, these dancers are much more free and indifferent to the voyeur's gaze under the veil of darkness. Set in a night club in San Francisco, Fang organized a dance competitino and recorded the even while processing the footage live in the similar manner as in Cinema.

As lucid as both works may appear, in their structure they are complex at the same time. Particularly in the way the central themes are addressed in both works-if it is profiling identity, modeling gender roles, control and/or self-control, or in the more medium-based ways such as the creator as producer as audience, performances and interactive process with moving images. They speak a multifacted language, and what makes them even more intriguing is their ability reference the history of video art.

-Boers-li Gallery

Image: © Fang Lu