aA29 Project Room
in collaboration with ShanghART Gallery presents
LIU YI
AMONG THE CROWS
Curated by Gerben Schermer
with the art advisory of Maurizio Bortolotti
21 October – 21 November 2021 Opening | Thursday 21 October, h 6 – 9 pm
aA29 Project Room
Piazza Caiazzo 3, Milano
Milan, 6 October 2021. With AMONG THE CROWS, the first solo exhibition in Italy of the Chinese artist Liu Yi (1990, Ningbo – Zhejiang province – China), aA29 Project Room resumes its exhibition activity in the spaces of Piazza Caiazzo, in Milan.
The exhibition is realized in collaboration with ShanghART Gallery and presents 11 multimedia and immersive works that explore with different languages, from traditional Chinese ink drawing and painting to animation and live-action, up to the large-scale installations where different media are connected.
Influenced by the long tradition of interactions between cinema, animation and contemporary art typical of Chinese culture, Liu Yi’s research starts from the first Chinese art films and get to the experimental animation, moving easily through different artistic disciplines.
Among her latest works, A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day (2016) is a creative documentary made in the form of a travel journal, a reworking of the particularly touching experience the artist lived in India in November 2015. The installation consists of several stretched and painted curtains that divide the gallery space, and on which the artist projects a film that is a combination of both live-action and flowing hand-made animations in Chinese ink, a restitution somewhere between the reality and imagination, expressing the drama and deep human emotions that the artist perceived on the faces of Indian people.
The audience is invited to walk through the installation and observe the static paintings and moving images, being impressed and overwhelmed, as in a sudden passage into another space-time dimension.
The Earthly Men (2017), on the other hand, is a philosophical inquiry into mankind, made by drawing on several layers of thin rice paper, an organic material that change with the humidity of the ink and adds a material component to the animations. The vertical orientation of the projected image recalls today’s dynamic way of filming with a mobile phone. The exhibition also includes light boxes from the same series which, through the superimposition of six drawings on rice paper, reveal a living and vibrant image, a transitory and fluid state of the human being that cannot be held and that is often difficult to accept.
AMONG THE CROWS becomes a moment of insight and reconciliation between two apparently distant languages such as ink painting and film.
Liu Yi‘s works shape the exhibition space of aA29 Project Room making the viewer part of the work, a participant in the world that the artist imagines. Liu Yi interprets the universal and timeless challenge of the clash between reality and imagination to get to the essence of human feelings and passions.
“I’m very impressed by the crows in India. They can be seen everywhere. They are not afraid of people or passing cars. The magic croacking of crows runs through the whole city. There is a similarity between them and the people lying on the street anywhere, with a survival attitude of acting as if nobody was nearby.” Liu Yi
“LIU YI knows how to express herself, and focuses not only on technique but especially on people and how they live with themselves and interact within society. She is curious about the world and inspired by meeting all kinds of cultures. She constantly explores the nature of human being and its journey through life. The spectator is invited on a journey in the parallel worlds she creates. Her power of perception touches all the senses.” Gerben Schermer