'Like a Urinal in a Nightclub'
You came and went. Here I was, taking in your silence and your chatter. Names were exchanged, titles never mentioned again. I thought about what you just consumed and what you were letting out, some golden liquid turning into another. You were like a filter, matters passed through you and became a part of you. I am but an ingredient interpreter, your secrets are safe with me. It would just be like confiding to a treehole – we all know that treeholes stay silent.
- Note on the wall in a restroom of a Taipei nightclub
Luo Jr-Shin’s solo exhibition Snails (Not Included) (2019) at Michael Ku Gallery features a series of sculptures, objects, drawings, mechanized devices, and site-specific installations. The exhibition centers around the ways in which objects and materials transform meanings and become vehicles for narratives themselves. Tying all gallery rooms together is a floor installation titled Water, Malt, Hops, Rice, Yeast. The title plays an important role of indicating both the material makeup and the implied referent of the piece. Having studied the beer brewing process, the artist coats the gallery floor with a liquid produced from ground, cooked, and saccharified ingredients found in real beer (as indicated in the title). The result is a sticky surface and an extended bodily experience associated with stepping on a beer-covered floor. The liquid itself is not real beer, however, but as the exhibition statement suggests, it is slowly turning into beer “conceptually.” In other words, the idea of beer merely exists in the audience’s imagination. The coated floor acts as a vehicle through which visitors can access their own memories and spatial encounters associated with the gooey sensation, connecting perception with imagination.
Preceding Snails (Not Included) are projects Like a Urinal in a Nightclub (Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taipei) and From Some Golden Liquid Turning into Another (MMCA Goyang Art Studio, Seoul; Vernacular Institute, Mexico City). These two projects assume the setting of a nightclub restroom, an intermediary space collapsing the public and the private. In here, people, substances, and messages flow. Water runs and some golden liquid turns into another golden liquid in sinks and urinals, common facilities that are treated as “indicators” in the artist’s work. Graffiti and messages are seen on mirrors, walls, and doors. Individuals transform physically and mentally in this iconic space that harbors multiple functionalities, demonstrating how materials, situations, and even psychological conditions can shift from one state to another.
You came and went. Here I was, taking in your silence and your chatter. Names were exchanged, titles never mentioned again. I thought about what you just consumed and what you were letting out, some golden liquid turning into another. You were like a filter, matters passed through you and became a part of you. I am but an ingredient interpreter, your secrets are safe with me. It would just be like confiding to a treehole – we all know that treeholes stay silent.
- Note on the wall in a restroom of a Taipei nightclub
Luo Jr-Shin’s solo exhibition Snails (Not Included) (2019) at Michael Ku Gallery features a series of sculptures, objects, drawings, mechanized devices, and site-specific installations. The exhibition centers around the ways in which objects and materials transform meanings and become vehicles for narratives themselves. Tying all gallery rooms together is a floor installation titled Water, Malt, Hops, Rice, Yeast. The title plays an important role of indicating both the material makeup and the implied referent of the piece. Having studied the beer brewing process, the artist coats the gallery floor with a liquid produced from ground, cooked, and saccharified ingredients found in real beer (as indicated in the title). The result is a sticky surface and an extended bodily experience associated with stepping on a beer-covered floor. The liquid itself is not real beer, however, but as the exhibition statement suggests, it is slowly turning into beer “conceptually.” In other words, the idea of beer merely exists in the audience’s imagination. The coated floor acts as a vehicle through which visitors can access their own memories and spatial encounters associated with the gooey sensation, connecting perception with imagination.
Preceding Snails (Not Included) are projects Like a Urinal in a Nightclub (Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taipei) and From Some Golden Liquid Turning into Another (MMCA Goyang Art Studio, Seoul; Vernacular Institute, Mexico City). These two projects assume the setting of a nightclub restroom, an intermediary space collapsing the public and the private. In here, people, substances, and messages flow. Water runs and some golden liquid turns into another golden liquid in sinks and urinals, common facilities that are treated as “indicators” in the artist’s work. Graffiti and messages are seen on mirrors, walls, and doors. Individuals transform physically and mentally in this iconic space that harbors multiple functionalities, demonstrating how materials, situations, and even psychological conditions can shift from one state to another.
SNAILS (NOT INCLUDED), Michael Ku Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, 7.21 – 9.8, 2019
