https://tintinschenk.de Tintin C Sat, 19 Oct 2024 21:23:38 +0000 https://tintinschenk.de en https://tintinschenk.de/home Thu, 04 Jan 2024 14:35:45 +0000 Tintin C https://tintinschenk.de/home https://tintinschenk.de/deep-dive Thu, 10 Oct 2024 20:31:43 +0000 Tintin C https://tintinschenk.de/deep-dive <img width="5062" height="3375" width_o="5062" height_o="3375" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9a370e3ec2811a596f731578e27783fc1048da68bf5b746d5842390ad196ab5e/0V5A0598.jpg" data-mid="220015718" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9a370e3ec2811a596f731578e27783fc1048da68bf5b746d5842390ad196ab5e/0V5A0598.jpg" /><img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/681818cc36667ad54609195dfb154b53707d25eb2184e672d5d3a541685bc9b4/0V5A0631.JPG" data-mid="219564637" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/681818cc36667ad54609195dfb154b53707d25eb2184e672d5d3a541685bc9b4/0V5A0631.JPG" /> This body of work operates at the intersection of animism, ecological memory, and the shattered remnants of utopian dreams. Through sculptural installations, projected imagery, soundscapes, and field-based spatial arrangements, the artist constructs a post-utopian landscape—part archaeological site, part ritual field—where ancient belief systems and speculative futures converge. Situated in forests or exhibition spaces that resemble both shrines and war bunkers. Their ambiguous materiality—wood, stone, resin, soil, living plants, plastic, and metal—blurs the line between nature and artifact, living and non-living, sacred and synthetic. The installation serves as a central axis. It explores natural worship, cultural power, and the philosophy of animism by tracing the symbolic resonance of stones, plants, animals, and seafaring. It reanimates the legacy of ancient ritual and magic through dynamic projections, interactive sculptural forms, and layered sonic invocations. These elements interrogate how animistic practices, historically dismissed as primitive, function as subtle yet powerful systems of belief and control—many of which persist today within the visual and symbolic codes of contemporary technology and ideology. At the heart of the work is the “Horns of the Beast” field. Large-scale sculptural forms inspired by the jade zhulong (pig-dragon) of Hongshan culture, the ram-headed deity Amun of Ancient Egypt, and the stylized horn motifs used in luxury branding today, are transformed into totemic presences covered in moving projections. Each historical layer inscribes a different animistic logic: zhulong embodies the spiritual role of animals as mediators; Amun’s horns symbolize divine authority rooted in nature; and contemporary branding reduces such forms into emblems of commercialized power. When touched, these sculptures emit audio derived from reconstructed ancient ritual texts, invoking themes of spiritual protection, sovereignty, and fear—anchored in the animist idea that spirit is present in all things. In contrast, the “Seafaring and Colonization” section traces how belief systems travel—both as expressions of cultural cosmology and as tools of conquest. Using a virtual ship and projection-mapped colonial trade routes, this installation overlays Polynesian navigation prayers with European missionary hymns, symbolizing conflicting yet intertwined logics of spirituality and domination. The ship glows like a talisman, a vessel of spirit and symbol, echoing the animistic belief that even journeys and objects hold consciousness. This spectral presence underscores how belief—once a source of refuge—can become an instrument of empire. This inquiry expands into the study of Zhongzhou Island, a small yet historically and symbolically dense island located in the Min River in Fuzhou, China. Once a sacred Taoist site and later transformed by layers of imperial, colonial, and state urban planning, Zhongzhou Island embodies the palimpsest of animist cosmology, military occupation, and technocratic governance. Once called “Dragon Head Island”, it housed ancestral temples, geomantic monuments, and was later repurposed during wartime as a militarized space of surveillance and control. In recent decades, the island has become an ambiguous zone—caught between natural preservation, state redevelopment, and private real estate speculation. Its layered histories echo the contradictions of animism in the modern world: a spiritual landscape hollowed by governance and capital, yet still haunted by rituals, myths, and ecological memory. By folding Zhongzhou Island into this project, the work articulates a localized instance of failed utopia—one that reflects global patterns of how sacred ecologies are rewritten through regimes of power. <img width="4000" height="6000" width_o="4000" height_o="6000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/72f72e1207a5e53c07e902d6d48548626d6ef4397f37ed9ebaf788c3216afad2/0V5A0647.JPG" data-mid="219564661" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/72f72e1207a5e53c07e902d6d48548626d6ef4397f37ed9ebaf788c3216afad2/0V5A0647.JPG" /> <img width="4000" height="6000" width_o="4000" height_o="6000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/afa75f5a288edfc23b8d68afb7005ab89e534158c6c0838d9257e29e8deaa578/02.jpg" data-mid="219564574" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/afa75f5a288edfc23b8d68afb7005ab89e534158c6c0838d9257e29e8deaa578/02.jpg" /> <img width="4000" height="6000" width_o="4000" height_o="6000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2a589deeb7bba4d61204a8ca0f3cb2934249708825b2d1c0c2cc4d850c88ebe7/0V5A0624.JPG" data-mid="219564636" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2a589deeb7bba4d61204a8ca0f3cb2934249708825b2d1c0c2cc4d850c88ebe7/0V5A0624.JPG" /> <img width="4000" height="6000" width_o="4000" height_o="6000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32ac250a3541e1692d3cf875bd90201d802a45bc430a688bb4a68cc6c8a07133/0V5A0635.JPG" data-mid="219564657" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32ac250a3541e1692d3cf875bd90201d802a45bc430a688bb4a68cc6c8a07133/0V5A0635.JPG" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/93dcddce8c8a38814e0c25d4d7eab34141f3f76f6ed0758933a9b270cf2cb92a/0V5A0655.JPG" data-mid="219564663" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/93dcddce8c8a38814e0c25d4d7eab34141f3f76f6ed0758933a9b270cf2cb92a/0V5A0655.JPG" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/67bd4a5ae0b05c3b7c0ee83af5eb43b28939661b219c281ae9bfa003b7aa6bca/0V5A0585.JPG" data-mid="219564620" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/67bd4a5ae0b05c3b7c0ee83af5eb43b28939661b219c281ae9bfa003b7aa6bca/0V5A0585.JPG" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a72ee61d0318df5b635d6876e1eff81216e28a4062cd76f2e5275fffd100c737/04.jpg" data-mid="219564580" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a72ee61d0318df5b635d6876e1eff81216e28a4062cd76f2e5275fffd100c737/04.jpg" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/069dda8beff520fd1dcc5ff9d6ac0e4fead616a2f51a2c42b0fdcbc3c766ad62/0V5A0715.JPG" data-mid="219564666" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/069dda8beff520fd1dcc5ff9d6ac0e4fead616a2f51a2c42b0fdcbc3c766ad62/0V5A0715.JPG" /> https://tintinschenk.de/EDGE-WATER-2016 Sat, 19 Oct 2024 21:23:38 +0000 Tintin C https://tintinschenk.de/EDGE-WATER-2016 <img width="3381" height="2098" width_o="3381" height_o="2098" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7d3f9be90d95644409f528a725bc8c2a87226f5a477cb29721c45f7f24a63404/-012016.jpg" data-mid="220002840" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7d3f9be90d95644409f528a725bc8c2a87226f5a477cb29721c45f7f24a63404/-012016.jpg" />EDGE WATER, 2016. Installation view. Spine model, steel bars, wood, coconut shells, embroidered shoes, PVC pipes, etc. <img width="3514" height="2430" width_o="3514" height_o="2430" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cd3f00c6d8c9be37d1754eedd86eafd1345d9ae64aa3303668cbf5dd3e9d253b/2.jpg" data-mid="223819215" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cd3f00c6d8c9be37d1754eedd86eafd1345d9ae64aa3303668cbf5dd3e9d253b/2.jpg" />Sculpture Draft, <img width="4480" height="2520" width_o="4480" height_o="2520" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9a4a4894efa7dd7d01bcf18cbd73f0a86efc5e6e31c2f1de5c4bae2af51c54bc/9.jpg" data-mid="223819217" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9a4a4894efa7dd7d01bcf18cbd73f0a86efc5e6e31c2f1de5c4bae2af51c54bc/9.jpg" />Sculpture Draft. EDGE WATER (2016) unfolds as a fragmented landscape of failed utopias—an assemblage of discarded structures, bodily remnants, and spectral architectures that resist cohesion. The spine model, steel bars, and embroidered shoes form a precarious anatomy, as if remnants of an abandoned dream of progress. The skeletal frame of the installation echoes the infrastructure of a world half-built, or half-collapsed, where modernity’s promises of stability and permanence give way to disintegration. For the artist, gathering is a fundamental mode of existence—an intimate and adaptive engagement with objects not as consumable commodities, but as entities carrying their own histories and energies. Having grown up in a socialist country shaped by an intense ideological pursuit of stability through control, the artist navigates between fluid identities and methodologies as a means of resisting rigidity and dogma. By attuning themselves to the intrinsic energy of materials, the artist transforms these found elements into reflective surfaces, revealing insights into their own individuality and vitality. Commissioned for the exhibition You Won’t Be Young Forever, curated by Biljana Ciric, this work emerged from field research, studio visits, and ongoing discussions on the youngest generation of artists in China. Rather than defining artistic expression by birth years, the exhibition loosely focuses on artists born from the mid-1980s to early 1990s, highlighting their experimental practices. The timing of this exhibition is a response to China’s evolving art system, where young artists are often pushed directly into commercial gallery circuits, leaving little space for radical experimentation. Independent artist-organized exhibitions—once a dominant force for presenting avant-garde work—are increasingly rare.https://myartguides.com/exhibitions/shanghai/you-wont-be-young-forever/https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/you-wont-be-young-forever https://tintinschenk.de/Under-the-Climate Sat, 19 Oct 2024 20:54:24 +0000 Tintin C https://tintinschenk.de/Under-the-Climate <img width="5623" height="3749" width_o="5623" height_o="3749" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a93062df3809f7b1d14ea50a0c0755cdff90f4ddb79f8a53656440c54a7f3e25/-2.jpg" data-mid="220002672" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a93062df3809f7b1d14ea50a0c0755cdff90f4ddb79f8a53656440c54a7f3e25/-2.jpg" />Installation view, 2015 Under the Climate, 2016 HD video (color, sound; 07:21 minutes) At the edge of an artificial park, water flows gently, threading through moss-covered stone pools and converging into a deep reflecting pond. The water’s surface mirrors the sky and clouds above, while holding within it the fleeting images of fish and seabirds inhabiting this ecosystem. Here, nature and artifice intertwine, climate change leaves its marks, and human intervention overlays its imprint, creating a space of ambiguous and tense coexistence.At the heart of the installation are sculptural forms of female bodies, their postures poised between stillness and growth, extending like roots from the water. These bodies are not enclosed entities but open thresholds, embracing the cycles of water and the spread of moss, symbolizing the forces of reproduction and regeneration. As Donna Haraway writes in Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, “We are all lichens.” These bodies are not isolated individuals but nodes in an ecological network—a symbiotic weave of humans, nonhumans, bacteria, and fungi. This vision of interdependence challenges anthropocentric narratives, redefining the boundaries and meanings of life.Simultaneously, the work reflects the impact of pollution and climate crises on aquatic life. Polluted fish swim through the water, paradoxical symbols of life—both resilient survivors and stark reminders of environmental degradation. Above, seabirds glide between grace and unease, their feathers marred with traces of industrial waste, as though whispering unresolved mysteries about the entanglement of capital and nature. The piece draws heavily from Haraway’s tentacular thinking and the ideas in Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret’s Women Who Make a Fuss: “Think we must. We must think.” It invites viewers to reimagine the relationship between humans and nature, not as a binary of control and subjugation but as a philosophy of coexistence. Within this artificial landscape, every element—water, animals, moss, female bodies, fish, and pollution—interweaves into a complex ecological poem, urging us to listen, to think, and to coexist.