The Moments Float By

ART LABOR Gallery is pleased to present the first exhibition of 2024, “The Moments Float By.” The exhibition will be held from March 9 to April 17, 2024. The opening reception is on Saturday, March 9, from 3 to 6 p.m. This group exhibition, curated by young curator Dr. Yang Mengjiao, presents the recent works of three emerging artists, Li Tianqi, Yin Hang, Yin Liang, for the first time at ART LABOR.

The sweet dreams of the 2024 Lunar New Year came to an end at an OpenAI press conference, slyly reminding us once again that no one can escape the grasp of “technological epochs.” Its texture is intricate and delicate, woven into the fabric of our daily lives, overlaying our bodies. Placed within Jean Baudrillard’s described implosive scenario and the theater of simulacra, human existence is continually deconstructed and then reassembled, experiencing the collapse and reconstruction of self-identity in every moment. Like “the moments float by,” the fragments of our lives are light and ethereal, brushed by the winds of technology, aimlessly floating between the virtual and the real.

This exhibition brings together the artworks of three artists, focusing on how everyday life entangled with technology is reimagined and experienced anew. Through the unique perspectives of these artists, moments easily overlooked in a rapidly changing society are captured, revealing the deeper truths hidden beneath the surface of everyday life. Yin Hang creates hollow models crafted by hand from digital images to represent simulacra, capturing and translating the ghosts of these real objects into digital images, creating hyper-realistic extravagance and hollowness. Yin Liang delicately observes everyday objects as emotional mediators, exploring how they generate and direct the flow of emotions between material, bodily, natural, and social realms. For Li Tianqi, artistic practice is more personalized, where the control and intervention of technological society are naked and violent, penetrating the artist’s professional actions (painting) and personal emotions, crystallizing into the “infinite jest” and endless sorrow described by David Foster Wallace.

Here, the artists showcase a race against their own shadows, attempting to seek a hint of unchanging truth amidst endless simulacra. Perhaps it is this continual exploration and pursuit that constitute the true meaning of our everyday lives.