Sydney Shen at Interstate Projects

Artist: Sydney Shen

Exhibition title: Master’s Chambers

Venue: Interstate Projects, New York, US

Date: January 15 – February 21, 2016

Photography: images copyright and courtesy the artist and Interstate Projects, New York

Interstate Projects is pleased to present Master’s Chambers, a solo exhibition of new works by Sydney Shen. The exhibition consists of a single installation, which spans both the upper and lower levels of the gallery. The work expands beyond the physical and is further augmented in the form of a downloadable horror-survival video game.*

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A fragment of a sentence suddenly, without any reason, has come to mind, something like: “…in the splendour of the catacombs, a crime with useless, baroque ornaments…”

Vox humana. Echoes of a past performance still pervade the derelict chambers where her musicians have long departed. Vox vermis.

Ground human bone, rodent remains, cyanobacteria, mashed to a pulp in a flagrant violation of taxonomy. Hidden surfaces, shellacked with donkey hide glue. Scarified plastic hangs on acid-burned steel skeletons, a morbid plasma of rust and refuse collecting in its veins. Fungus decompose every reverberation within the mechanical viscera of a prepared piano. Septic-safe one-ply roses litter the floor. Indeed beneath the soiled petals lurks a subterranean latrine.

Doomed to sentience in the company of objects, the maestro awaits trespass.
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Sydney Shen (b. 1989) lives and works in New York, NY. Some recent exhibitions include Weekends (London), Sydney (Sydney), Hester (New York), Springsteen Gallery (Baltimore), Fused Space (San Francisco), Derek Eller Gallery (New York), and American Medium (Brooklyn). Forthcoming exhibitions include High Tide (Philadelphia), Lock Up International (Frankfurt), and Hole of the Fox (Antwerp). Shen is co-author of Perfume Area, a book of prose published by Ambient Works (New York). This is her first solo exhibition and video game.

*The artist would like to thank Nicholas O’Brien for his help in creating the game