QI MU SPACE is pleased to announce the
opening of Gao Shihe’s solo “Out There” on Nov. 5, 2017. Number, according to
the Pythagorean School in ancient Greece, is the essence of the world, but is
what we call “the digital age” today the self-revelation of the essence? Or has
humanity got lost in their “habitat” as number became a self-proliferous tyrant
or a synonym of instrumental reason and deviated from its essence after
shifting from the metaphysical domain to the physical one?
While talking about Holderlin, Heidegger
pointed out that poetic sense preceded language and measure came before
numbers. Can we find in his remarks some possibilities to reconsolidate these
two kinds of numbers in our age?
Does Gao Shihe’s simulation of the universe
mean similar measurement that connects technology, witchcraft and poetic
sense?
Among Gao’s four sets of works at this
exhibition, “Revelation”, a site-specific installation, extracts the hexagonal
ice crystals in light and air in time of anthelion which were then reorganized,
by virtue of the tension between these crystals, into an astronomical
phenomenon in the technological era.
“Research into the Stars” takes inspiration
from The Book of Changes: the same law governs the movement of the
celestial bodies and the human world.
“Eternity” and “Lunar Eclipse”, both done
in 2015, make use of electromagnetic equipment, electronic components,
aerospace material, etc., to respond, with complex technology, to the artist’s
curiosity about the unknown space and multiple culture. We feel the earth
static, but the earth is actually revolving around the sun while
rotating on its axis. When viewed afar and introduced the dimension
of time, the starts move in a spiral fashion, so nothing in the universe is
absolutely static or changeless...
Gao Shihe was born in Shenyang in 1982. He
graduated from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts,
L’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), and École
supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole Nice, and now teaches at the
Department of Contemporary art, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts.
