Exhibition | Boundless Flow curated by Eunice Chen

Boundless Flow

February 23 - March 2, 2022
CP Projects Space, 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, New York, NY

Artists: Simone Couto, Tianlan Deng, Matthias Liechti, Yuhan Teng

Curated by Eunice Chen

Matthias Liechti, Holes, Blanks, Ways Out (picket fence) Offset prints, Dimensions variable, 2020

Exhibition View

Matthias Liechti, Holes, Blanks, Ways Out (picket fence) Offset prints, Dimensions variable, 2020

1/10

Infinite variation becomes possible...freedom to dissolve, reconstruct, mutate all forms, shape, color, location, speed, scale...

——Shigeko Kubata

The waves break as the wind chases them ashore. Endless sunshine kisses the surging sea. Water, current, and light, everything is flowing around us. Boundless Flow is a metaphor that refers to fluxing energy whose presence is flexible, vigorous, and transformative. It floods the ground, saturates the soil, and evaporates into the clouds.

As the global mechanisms reformat our mundane lives in this day and age, we inevitably swept out to an industrial and technological flow alienated from the intimacy with handcrafts. Through prints, videos, installations, artists practice their works by repetitive manual processing, providing us an opportunity to be more aware of the system in mechanical production to the fleeting moments individually and globally. Boundless Flow proposes an imagination to weave the stature distributed differential race, gender, class, and identity.

Matthias Liechti, Holes, Blanks, Ways Out (picket fence), Offset prints, Dimensions variable, 2020, credited by Jenny Liu

Matthias Liechti repeats the word “EXIT” and rotates each letter 90 degrees to create a pattern, in which the single exit-symbol loses its former signification. The installation Holes, Blanks, Ways Out (picket fence) deconstructs and presents itself from a new perspective, which invites the audience for imagination. Rows of houses, fences and crosswalks forming a community built out of holes, blanks and ways out. A community which asks for both: Porosity and interdependent responsibility.

Tianlan Deng, 2428, Inks, paper, 26 inches x 4 feet, 7 pages, 2019, credited by Jenny Liu

Site-specific installation and durational performance work for seven days. Mixing both a digital and a traditional process, "2428" was a systematic ritual recording a week of the browser history on learning how to draw a Chinese painting and presented as a single week online research: Definition > Subject matters > Symbolism > Composition > Material > Seals' position. The final installation of 14 painted panels was presented with a sound piece that records the artist's making. It adds an immersive element of the meditative work.

Simone Couto, A Day Has 12 Coats, "Watercolor" Print and Silk Thread on Japanese Paper, 11.7 x 16.5 inches, 2019-2021, credited by Jenny Liu

"Author: Anyway, Angela, what is it that you do?
Angela: I take care of life."
—A Breath of Life, By Clarice Lispector
Sometime in 2019, I found myself in a room with several boxes containing over 3000 membership cards of immigrants who joined La National for one reason or another. This 150-year-old benevolent society has supported Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Immigrants in Manhattan since the late 19th century. Every member must fill out a membership card, and I focused on the cards of the twenty-two female immigrants whose required 2 x 2 pictures were missing.

The majority of these faceless women wrote down that they worked as seamstresses. I believe they were working in the Garment District. In the first half of the century, the garment industry employed around forty-six percent of the city's industrial labor force. Its creation is considered one of the significant turning points in the history of American urban planning and politics and has had enormous consequences in shaping New York City.

Like them, I am an immigrant, but I don't hold a needle and thread, nor do I sit at my sewing machine the way these women did, out of desperation to put bread on the table and lack of choice. I make art, and I thank them for creating the path for us in the 21st century. Nonetheless, we are connected by labor, and I think of them with deep empathy when the corner of my index finger on my left hand bleeds from time to time from the countless repetitive hours of sewing.

A Day has 12 Coats pays homage to the women who shaped this country and traced its history—European and Central American immigrants who arrived between two great wars, working low-paying jobs. To create these pieces, I asked myself: How do we turn perception into knowledge and then art while thinking more freely, beyond myself? I looked at the agencies within the object used by those immigrants and the work space. I searched for the transformative potential. I thought of memory, reproduction, and the repetition of labor. Routine. I ran a photograph of an NYC garment shop going full force in an ordinary day and another of an early Singer sewing machine countless times through my regular printer until the image bled—and bled and bled again. Then, only then, I picked up my needle and stitched a remembrance of their legacy.

Yuhan Teng, Where are W Teng’s snowman going? HD Video (8:26 minutes), Dimensions variable, 2022, credited by Jenny Liu

2021年夏天，我来到东莞，在一个小镇工厂里打工。
In the summer of 2021, I came to Dongguan, working in a small town factory.
实则是为自己一部厂区主题的电影进行调研。
Actually, I was conducting research for my own factory-themed film.
却未曾料到，来到这里的第一天我就弄丢了自己的身份证
It was unexpected that I lost my ID card when I came here on the first day.
一切设定好的调研路径在刚开始就完全脱轨。
All the plans for my set were completely thrown off from the beginning.
无奈，我用一个假身份证，顶替别人的身份来到一家管理松散的黑厂打工。
Unfortunately, I had to use a fake ID to replace someone else's identity and worked in a black market factory with loose management.
这是一家做圣诞玩具的工厂。
It made Christmas toys.
在这家工厂，我做了很多很多的圣诞雪人、驯鹿与会闪闪发光的礼物盒。
I made many Christmas snowmen, reindeer, and sparkly gift boxes in this factory.
炎炎酷暑，我每天被人造的雪花包围，
Enduring the scorching heat, I was surrounded by artificial snowflakes every day.
此外，我还在流水线上谈起了恋爱。
Moreover, I fell in love while working on an assembly line.
东莞的恋人，就是暗夜里的蟑螂，
In Dongguan lovers are like cockroaches: they come out in the dark night.
白天我们在流水线上越过雪人货物望着对方
We looked at each other across the snowman goods on the conveyor belts during the day.
到了夜晚，我们才会下班出门，披着浑身的亮片与胶水，呼吸间吐出城中村的星辰。
After getting off work, we went out at night, covered in sequins and glue, exhaling the air of stars in that industrial slum.
夜晚里不只有恋爱，还有一批批的大货车拉货送到港口
Next to love, batches of large trucks pulled goods to the port in the night.
我问，这是去哪里?
“Where are they going?” I asked.
男友说，美国。
“America,” my boyfriend said.
我说，我们也跟车走吧！我们也去美国吧！
“Let's go with the truck! Let's go to America!”
我们也去美国吧！
Let's go to America!
我在虎门的街头，我暗夜里嘶吼。
I was on the streets of Humen, and screamed in the dark.
东莞，是一个人员流动性极强的世界工厂，
Dongguan is a world factory with high population mobility.
可为什么，我们做出的雪人，可以抵达彼岸，但我们的足迹永远只在几个工业园里辗转？
But why do the snowmen we made land on the other side, while our footprints are confined to a few industrial areas?
最初有了拍摄北美雪人的想法，是我得知雪人价格的那个夜晚想到的。
The idea of photographing snowmen in North America first came to me at night when I learned about the price of the snowman.
我在厂里是14元一小时，四舍五入算是两刀了。
I work in the factory for 14 yuan an hour, which is about two dollars.
一天从早8-晚10，有时加班要更晚。
My working time is from 8 in the morning to 10 in the evening, and sometimes overtime is even later.
中间扣除两个小时午饭晚饭时间，我的工资是168元，也就是24刀左右，
My salary is 168 yuan, equal to 24 dollars (minus two hours for lunch and dinner).
那么，我其实要工作两天半才能买一个最便宜的雪人（59刀）。
So, then, I actually have to work two and a half days to buy the cheapest snowman ($59).
而我北美的朋友告诉我，北美最低时薪是13刀。他们工作不到五个小时，就能买个雪人了！
And my friends in North America tell me that the minimum wage in North America is $13 an hour. They work less than five hours to buy a snowman!
我开始觉得这些消费都他妈的没什么意义，
I'm starting to think that these consumptions are all fucking pointless,
我每天在生产的东西，是不是只会在大洋彼岸存放一个圣诞节？
and what I'm producing every day will only be stored on the other side of the ocean for one Christmas?
然后，就变成未来的垃圾，还是漂洋过海的垃圾
Then, it becomes garbage, garbage that will pollute the ocean in the future.
我特别好奇，这些雪人最后到底会出现在哪里，会被哪些人买走，会摆放在什么样的家庭中，会在使用后，被扔在哪个角落。
I am quite curious about where these snowmen will end up, who will buy them, what kind of homes will they be placed in, and where will they be thrown away after they’re used.
并且，当我真的看见雪人被摆在商场里售卖时的那一刻，我万分震撼。
Moreover, when I actually saw the snowman being sold in the mall, I was extremely shocked.
我为地球如此紧密的链接、全球化的流水线链条，感到万分震撼！
I was shocked by the earth's close connection and global supply chains!
我震撼于，这一刻，我是这样残忍地清晰地明白，这些货物背后，是一个个的人在生产。
I was shocked, at this moment, cruelly and clearly understanding that behind these goods are people who are producing them one by one.
我开始拜托北美的朋友们帮我走入商店，走上街头，寻找我做的雪人同款，并拍摄下来合影留念。
I started to ask my friends in North America to help me drop by the store, walk on the street, look for the same snowman I made, and take pictures.
谢谢这些朋友，我每天在东莞打工之余，让我曾经手作的雪人，成为了地球彼端我的另一双眼。
Thank you to these friends. The snowman I once made by hand has become my other eye on the other side of the earth.

Boundless Flow

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February 23 - March 2, 2022 CP Projects Space, 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, New York, NY

Artists: Simone Couto, Tianlan Deng, Matthias Liechti, Yuhan Teng

Curated by Eunice Chen

Infinite variation becomes possible...freedom to dissolve, reconstruct, mutate all forms, shape, color, location, speed, scale...

February 23 - March 2, 2022
CP Projects Space, 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, New York, NY