Gao Yuan

Gao Yuan's animation Lunar Dial is a montage of paintings and drawings that create a suspenseful temporal “wormhole”. The artist excels at employing a cyclical narrative format, deftly incorporating visual, form, concept and metaphor. Themes include flowing water (water sounds, water droplets, a photograph of the ocean taken on a mobile phone and so forth), various lighting (moonlight, an incandescent light bulb, traffic lights, street lamps and a flashlight), and artifacts of knowledge (a human anatomy poster, library, flipping pages of a book and worn book covers). Through the balance of the duration, sequence and image of different themes, the artist exhibits a mastery of animation and montage that represents a peculiar view of time — the “present” continuously revisits both past and future. The film received critical acclaim at the Short Film section of the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam.