Klein Sun Gallery: A Visit To 'Shi Jinsong's Art Fair : Free Download' On This Week's RAW

(Photo : Design & Trend - Meg Busacca)

 In continuation with our RAW series, Real Artists to Watch, we wanted to present our newest obsession and feature the solo exhibition of "Shi Jinsong's Art Fair: Free Download" presented by New York's Klein Sun Gallery.

Our design editor stopped into the Chelsea gallery to experience the new, multi-faceted series of Chinese artist Shi Jinsong, which features sculpture, painting and digital work. The current exhibition includes a variety of imaginative methods through interactive bronze and wooden mobiles, free and accessible digital downloads, copper sculptural furniture and a display of tools, paintings, hand-crafted color pigments and Chinese interpretations of Harley Davidson motorcycles.

Jinsong's arresting collection of works also integrates an earlier project, Shi Jinsong's Art Fair, which aims to display his art as if one is experiencing an art fair. His interactive mobile, Suspension Strategy, is suspended throughout the main floor of the gallery and is created from tree branches.

The artist sourced a variety of tree branches from New York and Connecticut, while also incorporating cast bronze models of Chinese tree branches. The resulting effect is a whimsical, free floating display of objects suspended on strings from the ceiling. The Suspension Strategy offers individuals the opportunity to own and create a similar mobile.The mobile instructions are accessible online through a free download.

Jinsong stands to challenge the paradigm of art collecting, and through his uploaded instructions on how to make your own Suspension Strategy, he provides approved works and a certificate of authenticity. This approach questions long-held perceptions about intellectual property rights and brings Jinsong's creativity to a newer and much larger audience.

The Huashan Project series features sculptural forms, transforming commonplace items into contemporary pieces thus creating a dialogue on traditional aesthetics. The tables and chairs on display are made of copper and are exhibited as if they were paintings; with an exaggerated take on simplistic and elegant lines, the style is defining as it is bold. 

Along one wall, a display of tools has been redesigned to emphasize Jinsong's vision of an artist's imaginative recreation of our utilitarian reality. The Huashan Project series showcases a fresh approach to traditional Chinese design.

Keeping with the spirit of rebirth, Another Take on Resurrection Hill is a series of paintings made from ink depicting an animal's pelt. The ink is comprised of the ashes of nine animals and a larger tree that Jinsong collected while visiting Australia and Tibet. Each painting displays a dusty texture as a result of his artistic approach to combine the ashes, the dust from his work studio and dirt from within a Shanxi Buddhist monastery. With the creation of this series, Jinsong believes that he has released the animals' spirits from their physical remains and has allowed them to exist in a spiritual realm.

His next series is The Phenoix Gray, a highlight of works created by a dozen of artists who incorporate dust and ashes to produce seventeen unique gray pigments. The presentation juxtaposes the pigments on display next to a video chronicling the production of each of the artists' gray shades evolving from their life experiences.

In closing, Halong-Kellong, a music video features work that includes early 20th century farming tractors redesigned to create an elaborately-styled Chinese version of a Harley Davidson. The design of the machines emphasize strength, lavishness and grandeur, while men are transformed into comic versions of the ideal Chinese super hero in custom-made muscle suits. The result is a parody of values that have developed alongside China's rapid economic growth while involving Western icons, such as the Harley Davidson motorcycles, in a Chinese version.

The essence of Shi Jinsong's work is transcendent, thought-provoking, serious and yet playful in its approach to represent past and present Chinese ideals. The exhibition is on display until Feb. 28 at 525 West 22^nd Street in Chelsea, New York.

For further information on the exhibition and the Klein Sun Gallery, visit here.