Days of Yi

Artist: Yi Zhou

Venue: Castello 3865, Arsenale

Curators: Achille Bonito Oliva, Chang Tsong-zung

Days of Yi is a multi-media installation by, unsurprisingly, a multi-media artist. This media dexterity is regularly lauded, often thoughtlessly. The ability to make video and sculpture is no guarantor of quality work in either. Unfortunately for Days of Yi it appears the artist’s talent has been stretched too far, resulting in a sparse serving of interest. Even the anemic tones of the installations seem to reflect the pallid and paltry state of the work. Things were not helped by the gallery’s physical layout, for which the artist (Yi Zhou) cannot be blamed. Yet one suspects the bleaching of all videos resulting from the floods of light into the gallery, was something of a pathetic fallacy. In all the works there is an ephemeral poetry, this is granted. But it is not quite poetic enough to evoke enjoyment out of the usually spacey and abstract visuals. Neither is it translucent enough that the boundary between presence and absence becomes so blurred as to become engaging.

One assumes that Yi Zhou must be talented, because the visuals are undeniably technically sophisticated. But the accompanying text contains such broad platitudes (“The show tends to underline a personal journey from obscure unconscious early youthful views about universal disasters and natre; panning through transitional moments of personal search for identity..”) that the charges of meager and undefined content remain. On a concluding note, the reviewer was informed in the catalogue that “the exhibition will present a live peacock, a bottle filled with rice…” that the peacock was absent but the bottle of rice was present summed up the show neatly.

 João Abbott-Gribben