Restroom M: Song Dong
Restroom W: Yin Xiuzhen
Exhibition dates:
December 6-January 28
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 Dongs 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. Songs 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 Xiuzhens 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 Contemporània 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.
Restroom M: Song Dong and Restroom W: Yin Xiuzhen Exhibition dates: December 6January 28 Gallery hours: noon to 6 pm or curtain, closed Mondays
Admission to the gallery is always free
Visit www.redcat.org or call 1.213.237.2800 for more information