Lin Shan: Living Room
2018-05-12 11:14

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Opening：2018/05/12, 16:00
Duration：2018/05/12 –  2018/06/24（Tue.-Thu. 10:00-18:00, Fri.-Sun. 10:30-18:30, Mon. Closed）
Address：ShanghART M50, Bldg 16, 50 Moganshan Rd., Putuo District, Shanghai, China 200060
Contact：press@shanghartgallery.com | www.shanghartgallery.com


Living Room—a space designed for private and social.

Usually, in the room, the host will arrange different objects to fulfil his/her living demand and manages his/her self-presentation. When the guests come in and snoop into the room, the host can exquisitely manage the way of presentation through these objects in the room. Hence, this small living room is all filled with inconsistent tensions.

Lin Shan extracts the tension of the living room from daily life and arranging different artworks and objects to create a living room without a host. All the guests here are self-invited, and the only clue for them to find out about the host is from these artworks and objects. Like Baudrillard said, “It is certain that objects are the carriers of indexed social significations, of a social and cultural hierarchy”. But it turns out it is not easy for the guests to piece up the image of the host when they are trying to decode these artworks and objects. For instance, in a part of these artworks, the western-old-fashioned backgrounds and costumes suggest that the room belongs to a western family from the last century. However, the photo, taken from Fujifilm Instant camera, opposes to this suggestion. Such inconsistency can be noticed everywhere inside the room. It seems like these objects are depicting the host’s image, but they can also be misguided to the guest. These objects could be a set-up mystery by the absent host as a way of pretending, but it could also be the way the host wants to present himself/herself. No matter what, it creates unlimited possibilities for the audience to depict the host’s image and a sense of joy in snooping.  

As an artist born and lived in one of the biggest immigrant cities in China, Lin Shan sees how immigrants from different places encounter and identify each other. Through the living room, Lin Shan tries to discusses how is the self-identity constructed and deconstructed in our daily lives and who is the host of people’s identity.

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