Capsule Shanghai is pleased to present Gao Yuan’s solo project at Liste Art Fair Basel 2023, featuring her new paintings and drawings alongside the animated film Cloud of the Unknown. Through her practice across mediums, the artist explores the illusive nature of reality and the realistic relevance of dreams.
Gao Yuan’s artistic practice is centered around the complementary relationship between animation and painting. The acrylic paintings and works on paper presented at the booth will be incorporated as backdrops in her feature-length animated film in the making, while the short film Cloud of the Unknown is not only a preview of the said animation in progress, but also an independent and complete work on its own.
Cloud of the Unknown follows the protagonist’s peculiar experiences of lingering between juxtaposed landscapes and viewing a parallel world from the perspective of a doppelgänger. Consequently, the paintings reassemble fragments of a lucid dream, with an underlying tension between dreamscape and reality, rendered bizarre and disorienting by a labyrinth of symbols and metaphors. Some paintings originate from vignettes in the artist’s living experience, layered with a surreal and uncanny twist - from abandoned rooms in Hong Kong and streetscapes in Shanghai to a cemetery mountain in Gao Yuan’s hometown Kunming, while others are fictitious scenes that portray an imagined land with their unexpected juxtaposition and seamless blend of unrelated elements.
The booth floor is covered by a green carpet to resemble a meadow, echoing the lush painted scenes of the nature. Together the works on view create an otherworldly environment where the viewer dives deep into their consciousness towards the realm intertwined with dream and reality.
