↳ Exhibitions

[Permission Denied] at Gallery Vacancy

July 3, 2021

Artists: Ding Shiwei, Rute Merk, Sydney Shen

Exhibition title: [Permission Denied]

Venue: Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, China

Date: June 16 – 22, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Gallery Vacancy

Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present [Permission Denied] , an off- site presentation paralleling Art Basel’s ‘OVR: Portals’ with selections of works by Ding Shiwei, Rute Merk, and Sydney Shen. [Permission Denied] delves into the disjunction and recalibration situated within the uncertainty that supersedes the normality of our current lives. Appropriated from its original technological background, the term “Permission Denied” portends a nebulous void of isolation as the construction of individuality and the definition of the self have been digressively renovated through the transitoriness of existence and the impermanence of actuality. Dangling between the flicker of perception, individual consciousness becomes the parasite of conceived reality, an ephemera attempting to grasp any state of realness, fluctuating from the material world to the digital or even fictional sphere to portray the personal reality in the works by each artist.

Rute Merk draws fuzzy lines among genders, anonymous identities, and also the integration of realistic fiction and virtual realities in her painting, which reverberates in its aesthetics of late 1990s RPG video games. In Imma I (2021), Merk dazzles her figures in the vignettes of ambiguous clarity and translucence as they fuse into a bed of digitally mediated nihility by staging her subject matter into the seemingly computer-generated imagery and scenes. The character is animated, fluidized into a fleshless body in perfection as her individuality and identity dissolve in the carefully manipulated composition in which the narratives are unidentified and the scenarios are erased. The absence of reality accomplishes the rebirth of humanness through the loss of corporeality, reincarnating as ubiquitous beings that inhabit the untouchable and unreachable territory of a paradoxical existence.

Ding Shiwei constructs an enticing and poetic spectacle through video installations to foreground the digital representation and intervention of the physical world. His works undertake a witty manner to examine and dissect multitudinal analogy, enriching the collective experience under cultures of mass-media, redefining the principal-subordinate positions between body and user interface in the midst of virtuality and reality. The Abyss Watchers No. 1 (2019) carves out a concrete apparatus where Cybernetics and organisms collide, summoning viewers to experience a portal that invites while simultaneously rejecting their physicality. Capturing an eternal state beyond time and space through digital screens, Ding decodes individual experience into fragments of data that are triturated within his encoding system; and thus institute the naissance of technological immortality as showcased in The Vanishing Prophecy series (2020).

Sydney Shen employs sculptures and installations to create an atmosphere of wretched apprehension, examining the limitation of mentality through the extremity of the physical body. Exploring through various sources from the mundane and art history, including but not limited to medieval excruciation, supernatural horror fiction, and Internet subcultures, Shen aims to repel the canons of aesthetics, yielding new meanings of individuality for social and self- appraisal under the changing landscape of hierarchical systems. Infused with a certain melancholy of the loss and the absence, Die_Frau_mit_dem_Raben_am_Abgrund (2019) discreetly forges a state of tampered reality intertwined with the idea of realness in the use of found objects parallel to her historical references. [Data Expunged] (2018) further reinforces the ambivalence by composing a surgical screen whose curtains are substituted by the artist’s hand-braided chainmaille simulating medieval armours. The faith in their veracity endures; a tangible relic seems ipso facto real. Yet the access to the ultimate truth is permanently denied, alongside with the translation of the primordial emotions of desire and fear that are veiled beneath the bizarre and motley world that she creates, directs, and performs in.

[Permission Denied], 2021, exhibition view, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai

[Permission Denied], 2021, exhibition view,Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai

[Permission Denied], 2021, exhibition view, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai

Ding Shiwei, The Vanishing Prophecy No. 1, 2020, Video, 5.5 inch OLED, screen drive module, Raspberry Pi, wireless power module, acrylic, customized power, 155 x 13 x 13 cm, 61 x 5 1/8 x 5 1/8 in

Sydney Shen, Close Your Eyes, 2019, Rabbit skeleton, glass, 30.5 x 20 x 20 cm, 12 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in

Rute Merk, Acer, 2021, oil on linen, 105 x 80 cm, 41 3/8 x 31 1/2 in

Ding Shiwei, Jokers’ Revolution No. 1, 2020, Print on aluminum sheets, pine sticks, 250 x 400 cm, 98 3/8 x 157 1/2 in

Ding Shiwei, The Vanishing Prophecy No. 2, 2020, Video, 6 inch OLED module, screen drive module, Raspberry Pi, wireless power module, acrylic, aluminum base, customized power, 177 x 40 x 40 cm, 69 3/4 x 15 3/4 x 15 3/4 in

Rute Merk, Imma I, 2021, oil on linen, 110 x 160 cm, 43 1/4 x 63 in

Ding Shiwei, Jokers’ Revolution No. 2, 2020, Hi-FPS video, 5.5 inch LCD module, screen drive module, ultra-sonic sensor, stainless iron, customized power, 170 x 90 x 90 cm, 66 7/8 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 in

Sydney Shen, [Date Expunged], 2018, Stainless steel frame, aluminum fringe, 175.2 x 152.4 cm, 69 x 60 in

Ding Shiwei, The Abyss Watchers No. 1, 2019, Video, 2.39 inch dual screen, screen drive module, mini computer, acrylic, customized power, 13 x 12 x 10 cm, 5 1/8 x 4 3/4 x 4 in