"provozierte Beziehungen" ("Provoking Relations")
Presented by the Lepsien Art Foundation
Venue: Art House Düsseldorf, Mülheimer Str.25, 40239 Düsseldorf, Germany
Exhibition Period: 12pm - 6pm, November 14-23, 2019
Yao Hai's residency at the Lepsien Art Foundation is approaching completion and he will be presenting his new works in a solo exhibition "provozierte Beziehungen" ("Provoking Relations") at the Art House Düsseldorf from November 14-23, 2019.
“Provoking Relations" is a result of an on-going exploration on paper as a primary material language during Yao Hai's 3-month residency at Lepsien Art Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany. He explores the production relations between people and things, and the essenece of being part of this evolving relationship in the ecosystem as an artist.
Yao Hai selected several elements as interfering languages, including circles, squares, colors, metal rivets and sewing machine, and introduced these elements to a physical production relation with paper. Whether they are tangible or intangible; imaginary or real, these elements are the inducements and energy to explore possibilities in paper.
Deploying the abstract idea of a circle to embark on a course of action to intervene; applying water-based colors on paper as an approach to alter its shape; exploiting metal rivets to mediate and provoke the primary material language, all these languages have evolved into a symbiotic relationship. With this approach, Yao Hai emphasizes on the evolvement of a relationship between things, and the connection between a thing in its new form of existence to other things. He attempts to utilize the relationship networks to translate things into a new artistic language.
Yao Hai believes that the significance of his practice is the evolving process of the symbiotic relationship between the course of actions and his material languages. In the context of a basic relationship, different things can inspire new and unpredictable languages that incubate and shape new relationship context.
Yao Hai finds the study of the trajectory of these subtle relationship networks intriguing and the exploration process makes him feel closest to the arts.
