UNBOXING#1 _Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market
Yue Yuan’s universe flows naturally in the UNBOXING project, in the analysis of the protocol specific to each platform, the exploitation of a space without partitions, the spreading over a temporality that is both mobile and fragmented. Digital technology is made of data and sharing, where immaterial connections proliferate. From reality to virtuality, our needs, encounters, memories and wanderings guide our movements and forge secret links with strangers. Like Italo Calvino’s Visconte Dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount), whose body is divided into two parts, our same being is unconsciously shared with the other.
With the Invisible Partner series, Yue Yuan draws the blueprint of these connections by means of the packaged object, the consumer object par excellence. The parade of photographic images presents products that are “exhibited” in the corridors of every supermarket. Food products - of different origins and natures - which are always offered in pieces, far removed from their totality. Each foodstuff will be shared amongst people without them having any contact with each other, except in the final consumption.
From the material (product) to its virtual representation, Yue Yuan generates an intangible distribution space, the Yue Yuan Market. Here, any “visitor” can download the work, a jpeg image of the product, for the price of the product. The series also touches on the codes of online e-commerce since by means of a simple click, the object belongs to us. What will be the value of the supermarket’s art-object on the screen? Is it determined by the object itself, by its representation, or by the event that it activates?
In the Yue Yuan Market, the value of the piece in a digital format (jpeg - therefore shareable, reproducible and technically accessible to all) is defined by the value of the real object, which in turn is materially shared. The passage between the I and the WE is revealed by a sentence illuminated by the representation of the thing – squash or octopus – “we share each other”. (AD + OdN, trad. JP)
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Squash, 2020-2021
jpeg. image
21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
2,69 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Octopus, 2020-2021
jpeg. image
21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
8,95 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Baguette, 2020-2021
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21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
0,50 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Cheese, 2020-2021
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21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
2,64 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Beef, 2020-2021
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21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
2,67 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Red Cabbage, 2020-2021
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21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
2,29 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_White Cabbage, 2020-2021
jpeg. image
21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
2,29 EUR incl. tax
Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market_Normandy Pie, 2020-2021
jpeg. image
21 x 29,7 cm, 800 dpi
unlimited edition
1,99 EUR incl. tax
Graduated from the Beaux-Arts of Paris in 2019, Yue Yuan (born 1989 in China) is among the artists selected for the 65th edition of the Salon de Montrouge (2020-21). He recently presented his work at Confort Mental during the exhibition Une autre constellation est possible (solo show). In 2020, he was part of DO IT Festival Après demain, initiated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Yue Yuan’s work is like a trickle of water that metamorphoses and changes state, sometimes becoming ice, and sometimes mist. Journeying through reality with a moving gaze, Yue Yuan records words, light, and gestures and transcribes them into a new language. Photographic images, performances, videos, and installations also bear witness to a certain affinity between different spaces, times, and stories, linked by invisible forces.
Ordinary poetry or simple classification, Yue Yuan's work reveals the uncanniness of the encounters between objects and humans. The artist challenges us, asking us to re/measure our sensory perception in order to complete the ritual. By means of this person/artist duality, he also transcribes the vocabulary of creation and the context that contains it.
The water of the Seine, steam in a diffuser, can become - by this simple transfer – the evocation of a moment lost in time. The rain can speak and strangers - in an almost empty room - can exchange anecdotes about this place while waiting for the lightbulb that illuminates it to run out. The artist can push the wall of the exhibition space to lose 0.1 kg, the walls of his studio can be found in his backpack, he can borrow a coin from the Trevi Fountain without it - transmuted into a work of art - being distinguished from the wish that cast it. The work dwells in the words of others and the framework does not define its value. (AD + OdN, trad. JP)
Lear more about Works by Yue Yuan:
Program 2021:
14.10, 5 p.m. : Opening of UNBOXING#1, also on www.galeriewolff.com
16.10, 12 a.m. : 24h Galerie Jocelyn Wolff's Instagram Story by Yue Yuan
20.10, 12 a.m. : Video launch on Galerie Jocelyn Wolff's Facebook
02.11, 7 p.m. : Zoom conversation
On Instagram, the object-product mutated into an ephemeral sculpture, scrolling down the supermarket’s checkout belt into the gallery’s Instagram stories. The photographic series Client Suivant focuses on the temporary assembly of in/organic products with various origins, forms and functions.
It is a flow of objects which are arranged one on top of the other before disappearing towards our private spaces to satisfy our short desires. Under the artist’s gaze, and through his action, the assembled products became - as Yue Yuan describes them – “monuments of everyday life”. These totems of the ordinary, which appear and disappear on the conveyor belt, are consumed by the urgent need to move on, like the content that follows other content on Instagram, consumed by the need to move on to the next piece of information, in a stratification of messages and interpretations.
Next story, next customer, 13 seconds and 24 hours to exist before disappearing.
With the title How To Make A Monument That Lives In Your Head For 24 Hours, the artist provides us with the instructions for transforming the object into an artwork.
Conversely, the video entitled Borrowed Wish, presented on Facebook, synthesises Yue Yuan’s experience in a single narrative:
(if the link does not appear, click here)
During a trip to Rome, the artist decided to borrow one of the coins from the Trevi Fountain. The myth tells us that throwing a coin into the fountain means that we will return one day. Thousands of hands and cultures intersect with the secret desire to relive the same moment. Yue Yuan takes away a fragment of these desires instead of adding his own. He exposes it as an object itself intended to be borrowed. One day, the “coin” will return to its basin, it will dive again into the strata of coins and stories that will be gathered there. (AD + OdN, trad. JP)
Special thanks to Clara Bondis, from Galerie Jocelyn Wolff's team for her help and support