YIN XIUZHEN: PIERCING THE SKY POWER STATION OF ART HUANGPU | SHANGHAI | CHINA

 Nov 09, 2024 - Feb 16, 2025

The Power Station of Art (PSA) will present “Piercing the Sky”, the large-scale solo exhibition by renowned Chinese female artist Yin Xiuzhen. As the latest chapter in the “PSA Collection Series”, the exhibition is curated by art historian Wu Hung and runs from November 9, 2024, to February 16, 2025.

 Installed on the first floor and featuring over 20 monumental works of diverse materials and approaches, the exhibition not only presents the artist’s signature works and recent reflections, but also invites the viewers to embark on a journey of exploration that reaches outward to the earthly and the heavenly, while delving inward to the subtleties and depths.

Yin Xiuzhen’s creation is deeply rooted in her understanding of human beings, and her sensitivity to everyday materials infuses her works with tenderness. Yet, her childhood fascination with the heavens expanded her artistic horizon into the cosmos, expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of her imagination and creation. 

The exhibition is introduced by the eponymous work Piercing the Sky, a group of installations including Flying Machine, Piercing the Sky, and Sky Patch. Previously exhibited at “Translocalmotion: The 7th Shanghai Biennale”, Flying Machine employs a steel frame draped with white old clothes to graft together a farm tractor, a Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana, and a Boeing 747 simulated with aluminium sheets and everyday objects. It appears as a form of transportation, a work of architecture, and a gathering place for diverse groups. Visitors can imagine the pace and changes of world development through this hybrid yet unified body of differences and consensus, fusion and contradictions.

 Following Flying Machine is Piercing the Sky, a towering 15-meter metal needle that rises into a surreal dimension as if piercing the sky, symbolizing humanity’s curiosity about the cosmos through its material presence. In contrast, Sky Patch features thousands of sky-colored old clothes donated by the public at the artist’s invitation in the early stages of creation. Sewn together by the artist, this piece draws inspiration from the Chinese myth of Nüwa, who mended the fractured sky. The clothes from various individuals, combined with the act of sewing, imbues the work with both fragmented and mended qualities, reflecting the artist’s belief that clothing, as a person’s “second skin”, is a repository of personal experience, memory, emotion, and a bearer of time and history.

Personal experiences and collective memories are essential to Yin Xiuzhen’s art creation. She often describes her creative process as “drafting with all life experiences”. In preparation for this exhibition, in addition to Sky Patch, the artist continued her ongoing project Action and Reflection, which began in 2018, by inviting Shanghai audiences to donate 100 pairs of shoes with personal stories.

 These shoes, each attached to a fabric “leg”, merge into an undercurrent of the collective subconscious. Visitors are invited to walk through the installation and think about the personal narratives embedded within. Another collaborative work, 1080 Breaths at PSA Shanghai is a continuation of 108 Breaths at the Shanghai Museum of Glass, the artist’s project last year.

 Drawing inspiration from Buddhism’s interpretation of the number 108, the artist invites participants to leave a breath and a piece of clothing, which are then crafted into various glass vessels. Jointly initiated by PSA and the Shanghai Museum of Glass, the work showcasing in this exhibition expands to encompass the breath and clothing of 1,080 individuals - the traces of breaths are tightly encapsulated in glass and warmly surrounded by donated old clothes, highlighting the enduring narrative of life history through the interplay of organic and inorganic elements.

https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Yin-Xiuzhen--Piercing-the-Sky/179D6AC46ECF2B34