Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is greatly honored to present Klein Hurtz—Greenhouse Mimicry, a solo exhibition by artist Yu Siuan, opening January 6, 2018. Yu Siuan first came into the spotlight at the 2016 Formosa 101 Art Fair Curatorial Section, where his creations attracted widespread interest. This latest exhibition will feature 15 works, including new large-scale painted installations as well as a multi-channel video installation. The Greenhouse series, a collection that the artist has painstakingly refined over many years, will for the very first time be showcased in its entirety at the gallery until February 11, the final day of the exhibition.

Each work in the Greenhouse series reveals the experiments and investigative passage of Dr. Klein Hurtz, a fictitious scientist dreamt up by the artist. Dr. Hurtz’s laboratory is filled with decrepit instruments, each bearing different serial numbers and weathered by time. These apparatuses were originally designed to sustain and protect the life embedded within, just as a greenhouse protects its floral or faunal inhabitants; yet, there is nothing left of this life but skeletal remains, even as the sounds of grinding, clanking, hammering—machines in operation—still reverberate. The painting style of the artist, detailed and realist, captures and preserves that ephemeral moment—just before the instruments crumble into complete disrepair.

As they amble past the procession of deteriorated instruments and sense the atmospheric desolation of this suspended dream world, visitors to Klein Hurtz—Greenhouse Mimicry will catch a vague glimpse of how the creative designs of Dr. Hurtz imitate life in the natural world. Two such designs in particular, Klein Hurtz—No. M02 Greenhouse and Klein Hurtz—No. M07 Greenhouse, simulate the natural environment of the horseshoe crab, one of the world’s oldest living creatures, long-prized for its blue blood endowed with healing properties. These new masterpieces push the physical limits of scale and reflect an ever greater investment of time in the creative process on behalf of the artist. Furthermore, with the three channel video installation Black Box, the exhibition attempts to fully restore for the first time Dr. Hurtz’s research laboratory to its original state.

Overall, what visitors will find is that Yu Siuan’s realism evokes not life but death—a death to which the sci-fi futuristic world depicted in his works is inextricably tethered. Meticulous sculptural and painting techniques draw focus to the pieces’ steel components and traces of organic corrosion. As a result, the works bear a veiled quality which calls to mind the biological phenomenon of mimicry, wherein camouflage is used in the natural world as a passive method of self-protection by living things under threat. Similarly, the decayed remains within these machines, portrayed in photorealistic detail, are also protected by their own unique form of camouflage. As they hover between life and death, reality and illusion, decline and (re)emergence, splendor and ruin—their beauty in this one captured moment is immortalized.

The artist Yu Siuan was born in 1984. Early in his creative life, his works were selected for competition in Japan’s International High School Arts Festival and have since been exhibited multiple times in Japan and South Korea. Yu Siuan has devoted time and energy to his artistic work for many years. A master of exquisite realist techniques, he integrates contemporary sculpture with kinetic installation, stretching the limits of painting from two- to three- dimensional, and turning his envisioned sci-fi world into a distinct reality. With his realist works that straddle the divide between painting and sculptural installation, he presses on in his pursuit of the essence of beauty and, above all, life.