Ruey Shiann Shyu

Ruey Shiann Shyu has been working on kinetic installations since the mid 1990s. His motor-driven sculptures are constructions of a purely mechanical nature; nevertheless, the artist succeeds brilliantly in conveying vitality, feelings and emotions with his works, as well as creating an atmosphere of wonder and nostalgia.
The floor sculpture shown in the Künstlerhaus, Writer’s Vessel (2011), was made for the first time in 1997, when Shyu had begun to combine existing mechanical parts with finds from the natural world. It is a construction made from pigeon feathers, each one attached  to a metal ring, in an arrangement resembling spokes. A motor turns this like a wheel, so that a kind of visual poetry is created by the feather quills scratching over a metal plate on the floor. Writer’s Vessel represents, in an emblematic way, the duality on which Shyu’s work as a whole is founded: while everything seems to revolve around mechanical precision and control, the delicate bird’s feathers remind us of the fragility of living things and the beauty of Nature.
In addition, Shyu is showing the space-consuming installation The River of Childhood (1999/ 2010), which consists of a large number of metal-framed constructions connected by cables. It is the artist’s poetic-melancholic reflection on childhood and its carefree ease, which can never be regained.