March 5 - May 1
Yibin Tian: Our New York
“Tian’s main concern is individual psychology operant in a collective society with an eye for the indomitable nature of the human spirit.” – Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, from Yibin Tian: All for One and One for All.
High-resolution image gallery
The Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, is pleased to present Yibin Tian: Our New York. Yibin Tian’s multi-media installation comprises C print photographs, three-dimensional sculptures, and video installation. Tian’s goal is to capture the effects that authoritarian Songun-ism (Military First) has on its citizenry. Tian uses color film and casual observation as his methodologies. Aside from his aesthetic contributions, Tian’s work holds relevance in its timely cultural and social value especially given the recent political crisis resulting from North Korean nuclear testing and Jongil Kim’s refusal to cooperate with international disarmament policy.
Our New York by Yibin Tian (a.k.a. Lao Liu or Old Six) is an installation that continues his last year’s series All for One and One for All. His work is a result of being reared in a totalitarian government in Bejing, China. This rigid environment provoked him to explore the contrary lifestyle of individualism. Many of the works express the North Korean Songun (military first) politics, yet simultaneously touch upon democratic values as they combine western figures and ideas. Tian’s photographs and sculptures of North Korean military authoritarianism (Songun) where a nation is at the service of its leader Jong-Il Kim, are metaphors for power. Juche is akin to a religious philosophy that espouses worship of a charismatic leader and is informed by Confucianist values advocating the notion of filial piety and familial hierarchy. While exhibiting the last series in New York the artist enacted a pre-set visual dialogue between western and eastern militarism by posing together North Korean officers juxtaposed against New York uniformed policemen.
True to his desire to recognize human uniqueness, Tian has cast one of his many soldiers with a funny smirk in his facial characteristics while his body is lined up in unison with the rest. Surrounded by his large-scale photographs of North Korean soldiers goose-stepping in orchestrated simultaneity in front of their national banner, his soldier sculptures are reminiscent of army formations that in their sheer number and similitude strike terror in the hearts of viewers.
While the tension continues between the communist block and the west, Tian’s world as seen in his many political photographs, videos and sculptures critiques a much larger form of power, one that is more insidious in its sublimity, and that controls everyone’s fate.
Yibin Tian: Our New York is co-curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos, Ph.D independent critic and Associate Professor at the City University of New York John Jay College and Elga Wimmer, Head Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum.
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