WANG MINGYI
Caution! This is an Exhibition
Untitledspace, Shanghai
12 December 2021
Caution! This is an Exhibition (2021) consists of six installations and a performance that requires visitor participation. It brings traffic facilities from everyday scenes into the gallery, arranging them in an invalid, or prominent way. Warning signs, barriers, isolation belts are visual and functional products of ‘caution,’ prescribing a pattern of communication between body and space. In this exhibition, the visitors are invited to break this everyday life protocols by interacting with the installations, space and body of others.
01
How to Create an Invalid Space (2021) is a performance art that invites people to post warning signs on the exhibition space, on objects and on the bodies of others, breaking the rules of the space and thus creating a paradoxical, invalid space in the interaction.
A surveillance camera records the visitor's interaction with the space, the installation and others; it is not an artwork, it is attention itself.
02
Warning! There Are Warnings Above and Below (2021)
An isolation belt set 5 cm above the ground at the entrance to the gallery, and one set very high up at the entrance to the second exhibition, one is often accidentally kicked off, and the other is barely noticed by anyone. They are both embodiments of attention.
03
A Gesture, a Site (2021)
The infrared thermometer implies gestures and spatial rules. When you see it, it means that you need to make a specific gesture (e.g. raise your wrist) to enter a specific place (a place where temperature measuring is required). In this exhibition, the infrared thermometer is fixed to a very high level on the wall and the visitor can only be detected by jumping up or using a ladder.
04
Exhibition Area, Do Not Occupy (2021) showed a scene of an exhibition being installed. The floor was divided into an area by warning tape, inside it was written "Exhibition area, do not occupy," which declares that this area is not to be used for exhibitions during the exhibition. On either side of the area there were three ladders of different sizes which can be used and moved around.
05
Detour (2021)
When we encounter an obstacle, we know that we should immediately stop or go around it without a complex reasoning process; the body unconsciously adapts to an agreed-upon spatial rule. Through emphasising the presence of obstacles, the absence of events, the impossibility of interaction, this exhibition exposes the body as a background, unconscious, pre-reflective, and habitual.
06
Do Not Touch (2021)
07
Chi Chi Chi Chi Chu Chi Chi Chu Chu (2021)
This work uses PVC tactile tiles as the material to create tactile paving at the entrance and the end of second exhibition space. The name of the work comes from the Chinese word "行", which means walking, and is made up of two parts, "彳" and "亍", which represent the walking and stopping respectively.
