Simon Ling: Nowhere
LINSEED is delighted to present the viewing room of Simon LING (b.1968, UK), 鈥淣owhere鈥�, from March 22 to April 20, 2024. In the two large-scale works in this exhibition, the artist creates a clear but hazy space in the cutting and rearrangement of images and media, capturing the forgotten corners of the city, and framing these 鈥渦n-named" landscapes with a realistic lens-like scope. The hidden "dark matter" is brought into the light of reality by the artist, involving his personal perspective-driven observation and imagination to form an object full of sensibility and storytelling.
At first glance, the works in this exhibition appear like old black-and-white photographs with traces of the times, capturing random or neglected fragments of the city. The artist uses large areas of white and gray paint to form the piled objects on the periphery of buildings, depicting scenes assembled from different tilted perspectives, which are out of balance with the order of reality, exuding a sense of disorientation and continuous movement. Shimmering like the setting sun, orange lines create a spectrum in the work, bringing a new visual rupture to the naturally rendered objects and activating the scenes on top. As unassuming buildings and boats become the protagonists of the picture, a dramatic tension between the representations of images and compositions arises. Perhaps, the artist is thus guiding our experience and perception of the world, which gradually becomes tangible by the way we look at it and by the act of moving through it. 鈥淚t is a question of how you see something, not what it is鈥� (Ling in conversation with Tate curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas, 26 April 2011). In Ling's work, looking and seeing is an act of participation in reality, a deep engagement with the object or space to which he is responding, and the storytelling of its expression is often hidden in unseen details.
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LINSEED is delighted to present the viewing room of Simon LING (b.1968, UK), 鈥淣owhere鈥�, from March 22 to April 20, 2024. In the two large-scale works in this exhibition, the artist creates a clear but hazy space in the cutting and rearrangement of images and media, capturing the forgotten corners of the city, and framing these 鈥渦n-named" landscapes with a realistic lens-like scope. The hidden "dark matter" is brought into the light of reality by the artist, involving his personal perspective-driven observation and imagination to form an object full of sensibility and storytelling.
At first glance, the works in this exhibition appear like old black-and-white photographs with traces of the times, capturing random or neglected fragments of the city. The artist uses large areas of white and gray paint to form the piled objects on the periphery of buildings, depicting scenes assembled from different tilted perspectives, which are out of balance with the order of reality, exuding a sense of disorientation and continuous movement. Shimmering like the setting sun, orange lines create a spectrum in the work, bringing a new visual rupture to the naturally rendered objects and activating the scenes on top. As unassuming buildings and boats become the protagonists of the picture, a dramatic tension between the representations of images and compositions arises. Perhaps, the artist is thus guiding our experience and perception of the world, which gradually becomes tangible by the way we look at it and by the act of moving through it. 鈥淚t is a question of how you see something, not what it is鈥� (Ling in conversation with Tate curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas, 26 April 2011). In Ling's work, looking and seeing is an act of participation in reality, a deep engagement with the object or space to which he is responding, and the storytelling of its expression is often hidden in unseen details.
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