Exhibition View of “.GIF”
Recently, Gravity Art Museum held the highly anticipated group exhibition themed on “.GIF” featuring kinetic sculptures and installations in Beijing. As its concise and clear title contains media metaphors: being one of the oldest digital image formats, GIF images are still the carrier of the most meme communication ability at present. With both a lower technological threshold and higher dissemination efficiency, they symbolize a certain unique way of viewing in the digital age—a dynamic, circulating, refining, and repeating way... It is exactly in this way that this exhibition aims to refine the medium characteristics of kinetic works around “movement”.
In the view of Ouyang Xing, Director of this exhibition, “the historical context and linguistic framework of ‘kinetic sculpture’ are too broad, even outdated, often leading to misunderstandings and leaving people stuck in the intuitive impression of ‘moving’, while ignoring the deeper structures and concepts behind.” In other words, the term “kinetic sculpture” is increasingly unable to fully summarize the complexity of such works. What is really worth paying attention to may be, as Ouyang Xing wrote in the preface to the exhibition, “why and how they ‘move’, and how to view and perceive them, rather than whether they ‘move’ or not.”
“.GIF” according to the curatorial team, “refers to its technical form, and responses to its way of viewing ‘changes’”. Jointly curated by Duan Shaofeng, Xin Yunpeng, and Sun Wenjie, the exhibition includes three sections, bringing together 11 artists/teams. Their diverse means of creation include cutting-edge technologies like AI algorithms and optical sensing, as well as the simplest mechanical devices or natural forces. They investigate how “movement” constitutes the expression and artistic characteristics of the kinetic works, and more importantly, how “movement” potentially runs through the structural language, and then subtly influences the creators’ choices of themes, concepts, expression, and the ways that they perceive the world.
Exhibition View of “.GIF”
Technology, Movement and Nature
With the development and popularization of electronic technology and home computer technology in the 1980s, the path of “movement” has become more and more complex, and it has shown a trend of deep integration with technology, from one-way display to two-way interaction with the viewer, from physical movement to deep “interaction” based on digital technology, “kinetic works” have gradually been integrated into the broader term of new media art, making it difficult to define its clear boundaries. Therefore, from the New Media Art Triennial sponsored by the National Art Museum of China, to the various biennials and triennials gathered in the name of new media art in China in recent years, kinetic works in a narrow sense are often included in the overall concept of new media art or installation art, and there are few exhibitions with kinetic works as the main body.
At the beginning of “Vanishing”, the first section of the exhibition, “motion” is presented as a kind of mediation between technology and nature, so as to encourage viewers to rethink how to express the complex relationship between technology, movement, body, space-time and social field in kinetic sculptures and installations in the face of new creative and social contexts.
Exhibition View of “.GIF”
In Shi Ziyuan’s “Echo Room”, stones and flowing water are pushed by unknown forces in a shallow pool, and the stones that appear to be natural are actually simulated by ceramics fired by the artist in a special process. It stimulates people’s thinking about the complex relationship between reality and simulation, technology and nature, matter and memory, while trying to awaken people’s resistance to intuition and sensory discipline.
Installation View of Shi Ziyuan’s “Echo Room” at Section “Vanishing”
Similarly, Lyu Liantao’s works are also related to physical experience. He uses more direct metaphors for the body and power system to construct “miniature theaters of body politics”. The scenes are not only the material transformation of the artist’s anxiety, but they also convey the exquisite observation and profound allegory of the living conditions of modern people.
Installation View of Lyu Liantao’s “Waiting” at Section “Vanishing”
The limitation in Xu Yibo’s “Regulation of Growth No. 2” applies the hottest artificial intelligence technology at present, and it simulates and deduces visual styles and conceptual expressions through AI, and in the collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence, the artist tries to experiment with the possibility of future human creativity under the new technological prospects.
Installation View of Xu Yibo’s “Regulation of Growth No. 2” at Section “Vanishing”
As curator Duan Shaofeng explained in the preface to the section, the theme “Vanishing”, aims to present the alienation of human beings from naturalism to rapid development, and then extend to the reflection on technology. “Vanishing” can be understood as the “disappearance of physical experience” here. This is also the crisis that people face in the era of rapid technological development and it also stands for the phenomenon how artists reflect on technology and respond to artistic motifs with new visual forms.
“Movement” prompts “presence”
If examined from the source, the concept of “kinetic sculpture” has an evolutionary trajectory from clarity to blurred boundaries. As the linguistic core of “kinetic sculpture”, “movement” changes its form with the iteration of media. Then, how to define the frontier of “kinetic works”? The preface to the second section “In Some Context” quotes the theoretical summary of the 1965-1975 installation maturity period by art historian and critic Claire Bishop: “Sensory immediacy, decentralized subject, and active viewing as political implications.” It reminds that installation art, especially the installation art that highlights the characteristics of “movement”, is not only a comprehensive display of visual art, mixed media and ready-made products, but also a reorganization of visual elements, materials and information, and a kind of “relational aesthetics” elaborately created by the artist to guide the viewer to actively participate in it. This formal nature that suggests action also signifies the natural connection between installation art and the social field.
Exhibition View of “.GIF”
The five artists featured in “In Some Context” were all born after 1989 and most of them have supported their artistic creations in China with other occupations. Therefore, social life itself is the nourishment of their practice. Their creations break away from the overall context, develop the diversity of installation expressions in their own experiences, and establish models of their own scenarios.
In “Aerographies”, Liu Yazhou moved the commonplace sky scenery outside the plane window into the circular door of the washing machine. But this is not a simple misplacement, the image of the blue sky and white clouds in the work is not a real scene, but a landscape model rendered by a software. Looking at the scenery from the washing machine, defamiliarizes people’s daily vision, and it further reminds the absurdity of reality itself in the dislocation.
Exhibition View of “.GIF”
Zhang Jiaqin & Zhang Lunlun use the building materials including ceramics, bricks, plates, cement, and so on, to construct “Rebuilding in the Mist”, which is separated from the original function and environment but it follows a certain sense of form constructed by the artist. It is a chaotic and uncertain aesthetic field which has a strange resonance with the current uncertain world.
Installation View of Zhang Jiaqin & Zhang Lunlun’s “Rebuilding in the Mist” at Section “In Some Context”
Song Ziwei’s “Echo Valley” stems from her personal experience of sitting in the office, when the artist unconsciously sighed in front of the computer at work, the sigh of her colleague happened to come from the next table. The artist transforms this coincidental “resonance” into an installation interaction that takes place in the same space, as if it has some mysterious connection: the flickering of two sprayers and lights seem to respond to each other, but in fact they are just coincidences under the operation of their own logic, just like the emotional response in the workplace environment is actually not connected.
Installation View of Song Ziwei’s “Echo Valley” at Section “In Some Context”
As curator Xin Yunpeng pointed out in the preface to “In Some Context”, “At present, the works of installation artists urgently need to reconstruct the working context on which installations rely. Starting from different personal experiences, social scenes, and research topics, they should develop parallel subjectivity and reconfirm what the audience of (installation) art is.”
These artists included in “In Some Context” try to find a way from their own experience, reflect on the social, cultural and artistic context generated by Chinese installation art, and reflect on the development of contemporary art that has been vigorously expanding in the context of globalization since the 1990s, as well as various attempts to re-anchor their identity in the wave of “anti-globalization”. How to reach a certain reality of the moment? This is the media characteristic of kinetic works based on “movement”, and the inherent requirements that come with it, and it also continues a certain avant-garde background of installation art since its birth.
Moving , even it is almost invisible
With proper technology, galaxies tens of billions of light-years away can be seen, even the mysteries of particles can be found from a shell. Installation artists also explore all aspects of the nature of movement, and the third section of the exhibition, “A Slight Swerve”, curated by Sun Wenjie, intends to show a composite field shaped by a non-anthropocentric perspective, featuring the “motion” that is easily overlooked beyond the subtlety, marginal, and occasional points of the grand narrative. They do not only exist, but they also have the value of being seen.
Guo Cheng builds a ritual-infused “generative system,” where machines radiating uncertainty and digital languages transmitted via screens probe the polarized zones of the viewer’s inner world; In Bao Rong’s work, the sound of rain and the texture of paper create a refracted pursuit of the natural, composing a basso echo of reality through gentle disturbances; Zhang Mao continuously constructs the modern allegory of “flight”, directly facing the intermediate states of speed, repetition and weightlessness through ripple-like trajectories and dynamic cyclic structures; Qin Xiaoshi weaves multiple lost legends with delicate objects, awakening the dormant history and scattered memories.
Installation View of Guo Cheng’s “Abstract Oracle Generator” at Section “A Slight Swerve”
Installation View of Bao Rong’s “Dance in the Rain” at Section “A Slight Swerve”
Installation View of Zhang Mao’s “Ring: Dune” at Section “A Slight Swerve”
Exhibition View of “.GIF”
These subtle, marginal, occasional movement trajectories and non-anthropocentric perspectives showcase the visual experience and vision that are constantly being reshaped by technology in the context of new technological development. From the perspective of the technological history, the new media art based on the perspective of the technological reality of the third and fourth industrial revolutions explores more issues such as digital culture, network ecology, digital identity and technical ethics, so the issues involved in kinetic works may seem more “classical”, and it is closer to the passion, confusion and inner conflict of people when they are confronted with the impact of the industrial world and the digital world before and after the information technology revolution. However, from the 1980s to the millennium of the 21th century, our adaptation and discussion of subjectivity, body, and the concept of time and space were not solved or completely failed because of the overwhelming media breakthroughs, perhaps it was also the internal driving force for kinetic works to remain active in the creative and social scenes.
About the Exhibition
Director: Ouyang Xing
Curators: Duan Shaofeng, Sun Wenjie, Xin Yunpeng
Dates: June 21–October 8, 2025
Venue: Gravity Art Museum
Courtesy of Gravity Art Museum, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
