5/12/2006
Restroom M and Restroom W
Redcat, Los Angeles
Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen
Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen
For their first exhibitions in Los Angeles, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen present two
independently conceived but interrelated projects, Restroom M and Restroom W. The
commissions for Redcat consider the extremes of individualism and communalism,
opulence and lacking, kinship and violence in China as its interface with the rest
of the world evolves anew. Song Dong’s practice includes performance, photography,
and video and explores notions of transience and illusion in contemporary society.
In his photographic series and short video works, sequenced images depict a rapidly
modernizing China. Song’s installation at Redcat exposes the restroom as a censored
and solitary site that belies its social function. Inspired by the lyrics of
pioneering rock star, He Yong, “What we eat is consciousness and what we shit is
intelligence," his work captures feelings of isolation in light of a growing
reliance upon mediated forms of exchange. Yin Xiuzhen’s sculpture and installations
since the mid-1990s have often responded to the massive destruction and reconstruction of
Beijing. Through various types of interventions and exercises, she seeks to
personalize objects and allude to the lives of people affected by sudden social,
physical and cultural disruption and transformation. For her installation, Yin also
examines the tenuous relationship between public and private interaction. Reflecting
upon the relationship between individual experience and global transformation, her
project opposes older, intimate models of communal engagement with the private
demands of a commercially driven world. Both artists live and work in Beijing.
Born in 1966, Song Dong has exhibited at Asia Society and P.S.1 Contemporary Art
Center, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Centre Pompidou, Paris;
Centre de Cultura Contempora'nia de Barcelona, Barcelona; Mori Art Museum,
Tokyo; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; National Art Gallery
of China, Beijing; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Eighth Istanbul Biennial; and the
2002 Gwangju Biennale. He received the Gwangju Biennale prize in 2006.
Yin Xiuzhen was born in 1963 and has shown internationally at Fukuoka Asian Art
Museum, Fukuoka; Asia Society and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Third
Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; China National Gallery,
Beijing; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San
Francisco; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Both artists live
and work in Beijing.
Restroom M: Song Dong and Restroom W: Yin Xiuzhen are made possible in part by the
Nimoy Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Christophe
Mao.
Redcat
631 West 2nd Street - Los Angeles
Gallery hours: noon to 6 pm or curtain, closed Mondays
Admission to the gallery is always free