Arsenale: People’s Republic of China – Originaire. “Originaire” is a word created to
combine the meaning of “original” and “initial”. In the Chinese language, the character for “source”
is specifically in the context of water source.
As such, we evoke the idea “orginaire” to seek the origin of memory and
a mental image of the original world. We
asked five architects, artists and designers to create five installations from
different perspectives to represent different interpretations of the meaning “originaire”,
as proposed by the curator Gang Zhenning.
Above and below: Wang
Yun’s Square Garden is a matrix composed of 36 cubes. Each painted white and together all 36 make
up a square garden. Located on the lawns
of the Virgin Garden, each cube is installed with a mirror stainless steel
plate on top with different compositions of holes.
Wang
Yun
These holes are abstracted from spatial
relationships of traditional villages and settlements, which is the original
way of living for human species. The
mirror plates have a directivity towards one diagonal of the Square Garden, in
which texts with contents such as the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune
are engraved on the mirror plates of different cubes aligned on the
diagonal. These texts indicate that
human constructions are imaginations from the “original” to the future of the
universe.
Arsenale: CHINA,
People’s Republic of China – Originaire. Shao WeiPing – Sequence, uses slices to
create a linear representation of a Mobius strip.
Arsenale: CHINA,
People’s Republic of China – Originaire. Tao Na – Palace in the Sky provides and
interactive approach for visitors to experience time and space travel between
Earth, the planets and the external galaxies.
Tao
Na – Palace in the Sky consists of 10,000 pieces of small magnetic squares with
its numbers on the back. This artwork
has three different layers: 1/ The Map of Beijing. 2/ The View of Mars. 3/ The
Sight of the Galaxy. Each spectator is
allowed to take away one magnetic piece that they appreciate from the top two
layers, therefore creating an ever-changing presentation of the entire
universe. During the interaction,
spectators do not only receive a gift from Tao Na, they are also interpreting
the relationship between architectures, civilizations and the space.
Arsenale: CHINA,
People’s Republic of China – Originaire. Xu Dongliang – Lightopia, conjures a
scene of campfire and night sky during the prehistoric age.
Originaire: Shao
Weiping(BIAD-UFo); Tao Na; Wei Chunyu; Wang Yun; Xu Dongliang
Commissioner: Zhang Yu, Yan Dong. Curater: Fan Zhenning.