Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in collaboration with the Groninger Museum, is presenting the first major solo exhibition in Europe devoted to the work of one of China’s most important artists, YIN Xiuzhen (born 1963 in Peking, lives and
works there). The show consists of a comprehensive survey of her artistic oeuvre. Exhibition on view 15 DECEMBER 2012 – 10 MARCH 2013.
The exhibition begins with Yin’s early installations that are often presented in uninhabited, untouched landscapes and now exist solely in the shape of photographic documentations. The show focuses however on the expansive installations as well as the recent monumental accessible textile installations that represent a watershed in Yin’s oeuvre.
Yin’s works from the 1990s, for example “Washing River” (1995), are strongly motivated by politics when she broaches the theme of the consequences of industry and technology on nature and the people: a performance is documented in photographs in which Chinese citizens “wash” dirty water that has been frozen into a rectangular block of ice with sponges until the ice melts. Other photographs, for instance “The Tree of Parting” (1994), reference a separate reduced aesthetic by means of the motif and its pictorial composition that makes it appear like an autonomous work, despite the fact that it was not conceived as such. – www.kunsthalle-dusseldorf.de