Art News

The whole world may just be a big bunch of scribbles, our lives and the events inside them only clever interpretations based on our perspective. Even if someone were to explain to you the many intricacies and nuances inherent in the term “perspective”, that itself would be from their perspective. Perhaps you’ve  your own opinion of the matter. It should come as no enormous shock then that people have their very own versions of events (sometimes held onto rather tightly). This is likely why eyewitness testimony in court cases is often seen as unreliable, why we seek the approval of others for things we like, even sometimes why we fight wars. Scribbles is a visual ode to the succulent randomness the world lends out to us and why our perspective and interpretations decide whether we see masterpieces worthy of thorough examination... or just a bunch of scribbles.

One of the big problems with abstract interpretation and analysis is that it is sometimes guilty of focusing too intently on the miniscule details. As that classic quote refers to- sometimes people look so acutely at the trees that they fail to notice the forest. Not only do different people often interpret the same event differently, even the same person will interpret the same thing differently when exposed to it more than once. A book read for the second time will always shed new insight on a character or part of the story. The same goes for movies, food and even the people that we spend our time with. The human experience is, and always will be, one inherently filled with doubt, indecision and a search for deeper meaning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have one hell of a good time trying to figure it out... or blissfully unconcerned with what any of the answers might really be.

 

Scribbles @ island6 Bund runs until 18 September @ island6 Bund. G/F, 17 Fuzhou Lu, near Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu. Tel: 6333 8283. Web: www.island6.org
 

Pearl Lam Galleries presents Babel World, Paris-based, Shanghai-born artist Du Zhenjun’s solo exhibition. The exhibition will feature a selection from the artist’s recent series of photography works, together with an early multimedia video work and a new media installation created specifically for this show.

 

Du Zhenjun works primarily in digital media, which the artist believes is the most relevant way of making art in an era largely dominated and shaped by digital technologies. Du’s interactive new media installations and digitally manipulated photographs have made him one of China’s most recognised digital artists.

 

The exhibition title, Babel World, comes from the artist’s series of photographs of the same name, which emanate his imagination and visions of post-dystopian ruins, as an artist’s delineation and retort to what the world is becoming. For Du, Babel World symbolises globalisation that is built on the base of a universal digital language.

 

The underlying theme that weaves through this series of photographs is globalisation and the brutal changes brought upon our social condition by digital technologies that inevitably reshape our reality. This series of work is inspired by the Tower of Babel story in the Book of Genesis, in which mankind, who spoke one common language, tried to build a city and tower to reach heaven. God intervened by disorientating them through the creation of multiple languages as a punishment for their betrayal, dispersing people all over the world. With the myth of Babel as a backdrop, Du’s use of computer technologies allows him to reinterpret the Genesis story in the present day, using digitally assembled Internet-sourced images to create a collage in order to spotlight a different facet of modern conflict, ranging from consumption, climate change and environmental catastrophe, to individualism and geopolitical conflicts.

 

In this exhibition, a section of the gallery space is dedicated to revealing to the audience both raw and original Internet-sourced images from which these large photographs are composed, and sketches that echo the making of these controversial works. The epic, majestic towers of Babel are Du’s contemporary rendition of the apocalypse, whereby the world’s ecology and its selfdestruction are not only comprised of environmental and physical surroundings, but also the mental structure and values of humankind and society to which it correlates. At first glance, the photographs of Babel, a fictional republic, appear to be images of colossal ruins in the foreground of a chaotic urban-scape. Upon closer examination, the more human details of the characters symbolise human relations and indiscriminate concerns, such as love, conflict and struggle.