Curator’s introduction and Exhibition review by Irina Ideas

Introduction

At first there was one and then slowly or quickly (depending on how we look at things) the world turned into multiplication, from the Big Bang, the firmament of our stars to the primordial soup where the single celled organisms slowly through millions of years created a building blocks of more complex organisms. Multicellular organisms, now a dominant form of intelligence on Earth is still using and reflecting upon many aspects from this original order of progression, “from one to many”. The numbers don’t stop just at the biological entities but go further into the creation of humanity – digital world ruled by the binary order, alternating zeros and ones in the order of precision and infinite combinatorics and this exhibition is the x ray of these very topics from one to many, from many to one, reflection between micro and macro cosmos, being shaped by the environment and shaping the environment. The question of singularity with self, machines, large number of people and yet being aware of the individuality of each pin on the board, each grain of the clay, each line of the painting, each thread that proceeds and withdraws in the rhythm of life as we are given a chance to reflect in this moment surrounded by the mirror of truth.  

Singularity multiplied

The inside mirrors the outside many times over in the rhythm of Mandelbrot Set and yet stays unified

Upon entering the world of art by Wu Yiwen, one wonders, what is it that is so special about the imprint of one of the most ubiquitous forms we observe in every day life, and then we get the answer, in that very instant of asking.

It is the prevalence that makes this form so powerful, the repetition and uniformity as we face it every single day, the singularity of many tiny objects put together in a package and then letting them be shaped by the outside. There is a very particular type of power and transcendence in the two concepts present in this collection, one is about a singularity, something that is unique, standing in it’s own glory and at the same time the repetition and reflection of that same object/subject almost infinite number of times. 

Our Civilization through history alternated between the two ideals, one was to promote the individuality, almost to a point of building a cult of personality and the other, to make the masses unified in a common goal almost to the point of losing the individual sense and becoming a part of the substance whose shape is defined by the external factors. Exactly in this way Wu Yiwen’s work touches our thinking processes, the way we see reality both as an expression of an individual cell and a part of a whole organism, the larger the organism is, the more influence it gets from the external environment and then we wonder about the balance in the world. How do we achieve the golden mean, and do we stay there or do we proceed with the pendulum from one end to another.

Wu Yiwen is touching upon this very aspect, the balance between one and many and also the interaction between the innovation (movement) and repetition (stasis). The use of colour or absence of it is also communicating about these very same elements through reinforcing the idea of reflection through the use of metal. Our current civilization is soaked in metal from construction industry, design to the space travel, each and every one of them is covered in metal either as a shield or a necessary structure, an integrity that keeps the whole together. In these pieces the use of metal evokes of the frozen moment, the time standing still, wondering at the world as it gets shaped and reshaped in it’s softness and harshness, flexibility and resistance. Those are all the shades of our perception towards the existence, the reality that surrounds us that wants to dominate and surrender at the same time. 

Wu Yiwen comes from a place influenced by the textile industry and this is apparent in his work especially the paintings on paper, they hold the invisible threads of thoughts repeating many times but when we look into them from the distance we see the the lines of a newspaper, another companion of Wu Yiwen’s past for ten years. All of these aspects acted as firmaments in which the current body of art: the power of infinite repetition of one was built. The ancient saying says Repetitio est mater studiorum – Repetition is the mother of all learning, and in this collection, we witness this very concept, realizing the way of truth but also a method of learning, resonating with what we all have to go through in order to create a higher awareness of the world around.

The fact that everything around us is packaged, in most cases with the invisible material, makes us think about the invisible hand that guides the civilization forward, it sinks deep into the subconscious mind and we can only think of patterns here and there that are made with these invisible elements. Wu Yiwen explores and dives deep into the world of patterns, the most universal form of intelligence functioning, as it navigates through life, classifying and sorting the full spectrum. Sometimes this sorting wants to be exploratory so it lives through the irregular shapes almost floats and gets reflected in the other world of metallic reflection, and other times Wu Yiwen’s art works, evoke  the representation of our digital reality, the infinite use of 0 and 1 as they are interlocked in the dance of calculation and expression as we witness the birth of another sentient being The AI. The question is how will our reality reflect upon an individual and many individuals when we have to think about another inhabitant of this planet, it is slowly integrating with our lives and our machines with the power to reinforce in us a unique individualism and also to make us a part of the organized and synchronized whole. The most important aspect is still in the air between all the metallic, reflective and timeless and it says something the Ancient Greek knew about: a Golden Means.