Yan Xing: Opfer

The exhibition consists of two large and conceptually related installations that continue Xing’s study of themes such as negativity, resistance, and order, exploring their complex interrelations.

Inspired by conceptual practices in art, French literature and cinema, the artist completely fills the gallery’s ground level with a floor installation that act as stage for performative actions that will occur throughout the exhibition. These are all centered around a specter of sacrifice and mercy – an atmosphere that continues on the second floor, where a video installation shows films captured in São Paulo by the artist, all presenting aspects of the city’s violence and ferocious nature. Opfer, which means “sacrifice” and takes inspiration from an Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie, presents an artist that sets together issues that are extremely conceptual, sharp in it’s presentation, but at the same time charged with a daunting primitive edge that leaves the audience in an unsettling state of mind, suspecting darker issues may lay beneath the surface of what it sees.