Yan Shilin：The Park Never Closes

Ginkgo Space gladly presents Yan Shilin’s first solo exhibition in the space. “The Park Never Closes”, opens from October 17th to December 5, 2020, showcasing a brand new body of work from the recent four years after Yan's previous solo presentation in 2016.

Since 2008, Yan has worked with a classical sculptural language, developed form college years, to investigate the idea of growth, lost and loneliness. Yan is a spectator of his own works, looking into the reality of a “inner-self” through a unique “Yan’s aesthetic”.

In recent years, Yan has been reflecting on the boundary of his creative comfort zone and has pushed himself to experiment with more tools and materials. He started to use VR as a creative medium in 2018, shaping his forms with the “stringy things” from the airbrush. Yan translates felt experiences with virtual tools and transmits them back to the real world with all the vividness.

“The Park Never Closes” reveals the artist’s recent thoughts on Man and Nature during the pandemic. An array of monumental figurative sculptures stand in the room. They are all created in VR software, covered with vibrant colors and indescribable forms of virus, fungi or flesh. In this body of work, Yan is executing various possibilities of symbiosis. In another painting series, Yan decides to paint in the virtual space. A strike of lightning, a stunned rabbit, a skull and some flabby worms, Yan gives form to the derivatives of one’s ego, superego and outside pressure with a touch of bitter humor. He builds a “fountain” in the space with the blown-up parts from the “Symbiosis Series” as a counter-piece to the genesis. He is inspired by The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. He uses the role of the children, the giant and the winter in the book as a general analogy for human, the epidemic and the nature, bringing forward all the complexity and paradox among them. “The Park Never Closes” envisions a story of the post-pandemic age when the symbiosis of human and nature, the duality of truth and beauty, the wit of the artist are on-site to be reconsidered and re-experienced.

Yan Shilin, born in 1982 in Changsha, Hunan. He received his bachelor degree in Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 2007, majoring in sculpture. He now lives and works in Beijing. His recent exhibitions include WWW - Yan Shilin Solo show in Hi Art Center, Beijing, 2016; Gorgeous Growth - Yan Shilin Sculpture Exhibition in Long Museum, Shanghai, 2014. His works are also included in collections of Long Museum, MOCA Yinchuan,Taiwan Xi Zhi Tang Art Foundation, Shenzhen Artron Library, Beijing DoubleTree by Hilton and Beijing DoubleTree by Hilton.