UNBOXING#1 _Yue Yuan
Yue Yuan Market
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Yue Yuan’s universe flows naturally in the UNBOXING project, in the analysis of the protocol specific to each platform, the exploitation of a space without partitions, the spreading over a temporality that is both mobile and fragmented. Digital technology is made of data and sharing, where immaterial connections proliferate. From reality to virtuality, our needs, encounters, memories and wanderings guide our movements and forge secret links with strangers. Like Italo Calvino’s Visconte Dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount), whose body is divided into two parts, our same being is unconsciously shared with the other.
With the Invisible Partner series, Yue Yuan draws the blueprint of these connections by means of the packaged object, the consumer object par excellence. The parade of photographic images presents products that are “exhibited” in the corridors of every supermarket. Food products – of different origins and natures – which are always offered in pieces, far removed from their totality. Each foodstuff will be shared amongst people without them having any contact with each other, except in the final consumption.
From the material (product) to its virtual representation, Yue Yuan generates an intangible distribution space, the Yue Yuan Market. Here, any “visitor” can download the work, a jpeg image of the product, for the price of the product. The series also touches on the codes of online e-commerce since by means of a simple click, the object belongs to us. What will be the value of the supermarket’s art-object on the screen? Is it determined by the object itself, by its representation, or by the event that it activates?
In the Yue Yuan Market, the value of the piece in a digital format (jpeg – therefore shareable, reproducible and technically accessible to all) is defined by the value of the real object, which in turn is materially shared. The passage between the I and the WE is revealed by a sentence illuminated by the representation of the thing – squash or octopus – “we share each other”.
(AD + OdN, trad. JP)
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Squash, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Octopus, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Baguette, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Cheese, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Beef, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Red Cabbage, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_White Cabbage, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan Yue Yuan Market_Normandy Pie, 2020-2021
Yue Yuan graduated at HISK (Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten) in 2023 and at the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (DNSAP) in 2019.
His work has been shown recently: Fondation CAB, Brussels (BE), Roger Raveel Museum, Machelen (BE), Le Botanique, Brussels (BE), Centrale for contemporary art, Brussels (BE), Komplot, Brussels (BE), SIRA, Paris (FR), Image/imatge centre d’art, Orthez (FR), Super Dakota, Brussels (BE), CCINQ, Brussels (BE), Galeria Jaqueline Martins, Brussels (BE).
From one story to another, Yue Yuan’s practice moves through performances, publications, and spatial interventions, inviting the audience to step into the narrative as a character. He once took a coin from the Trevi Fountain to borrow a wish; swapped umbrellas with strangers to exchange the sound of rain; and distributed invitation cards for an exhibition which will take place in ten years. These gestures leave almost no trace, except for an enigma lingering in memory. His concern is not with how the story unfolds, but with how each individual re-interprets it to make it their own. Attuned to the flow and transformation of stories, he reveals the personal imaginations that take root within each retelling. Like recipes: the earliest forms of open-source knowledge, stories offer ingredients that can be altered across time, place, and season to create endless variations.
Learn more about Works by Yue Yuan:
On Instagram, the object-product mutated into an ephemeral sculpture, scrolling down the supermarket’s checkout belt into the gallery’s Instagram stories. The photographic series Client Suivant focuses on the temporary assembly of in/organic products with various origins, forms and functions.
It is a flow of objects which are arranged one on top of the other before disappearing towards our private spaces to satisfy our short desires. Under the artist’s gaze, and through his action, the assembled products became – as Yue Yuan describes them – “monuments of everyday life”. These totems of the ordinary, which appear and disappear on the conveyor belt, are consumed by the urgent need to move on, like the content that follows other content on Instagram, consumed by the need to move on to the next piece of information, in a stratification of messages and interpretations.
Next story, next customer, 13 seconds and 24 hours to exist before disappearing.
With the title How To Make A Monument That Lives In Your Head For 24 Hours, the artist provides us with the instructions for transforming the object into an artwork.
Conversely, the video entitled Borrowed Wish, presented on Facebook, synthesises Yue Yuan’s experience in a single narrative:
(if the link does not appear, click here )
During a trip to Rome, the artist decided to borrow one of the coins from the Trevi Fountain. The myth tells us that throwing a coin into the fountain means that we will return one day. Thousands of hands and cultures intersect with the secret desire to relive the same moment. Yue Yuan takes away a fragment of these desires instead of adding his own. He exposes it as an object itself intended to be borrowed. One day, the “coin” will to its basin, it will dive again into the strata of coins and stories that will be gathered there. (AD + OdN, trad. JP)
Program 2021 :
14.10, 5 p.m. : Opening of UNBOXING#1, also on www.galeriewolff.com
16.10, 12 a.m. : 24h Galerie Jocelyn Wolff’s Instagram Story by Yue Yuan
20.10, 12 a.m. : Video launch on Galerie Jocelyn Wolff’s Facebook
02.11, 7 p.m. : Zoom conversation
Special thanks to Clara Bondis, from Galerie Jocelyn Wolff’s team for her help and support