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Cai Duobao’s "Cranky Little Xiaoji" is an installation of five trees leaning out of the walls and into the closed space of the gallery, and, as an inversion of nature and a domestication of wilderness, the effect is eerily beautiful as the leafless branches cast fractured, webbed shadows onto the white walls from which they appear. The sudden border between bark and blankness mimics the boundaries of our personal perceptions, the line between ‘in mind’ and ‘out of mind’, conscious and ignorant, reality and non-existence.
When harnessing the energy of flooding rationalizations and lies, we can build our own little worlds. But sometimes others build them for us, and what we consider our headquarters may actually be a prison if we take our heads out of the sand long enough to look at it. Each tree holds an attractive birdcage, elegantly curtained, beckoning with its appearance for everyone to have a closer look. Coming to feed our little friends, you will find yourselves face-to-face with a stuffed fluffy chick, a fixed symbol of their next destination, shouting, “Keep walking you dumb sack of shit.” when triggered by an IR sensor in the light from the opened curtain, shattering any illusions of serenity in our self-fictionalized worlds. [Pete Bradt] |
