OUT THERE

QI MU SPACE is pleased to announce the opening of Gao Shihe’s solo “Out There” on Nov. 5, 2017. Number, according to the Pythagorean School in ancient Greece, is the essence of the world, but is what we call “the digital age” today the self-revelation of the essence? Or has humanity got lost in their “habitat” as number became a self-proliferous tyrant or a synonym of instrumental reason and deviated from its essence after shifting from the metaphysical domain to the physical one?   

While talking about Holderlin, Heidegger pointed out that poetic sense preceded language and measure came before numbers. Can we find in his remarks some possibilities to reconsolidate these two kinds of numbers in our age?   

Does Gao Shihe’s simulation of the universe mean similar measurement that connects technology, witchcraft and poetic sense? 

Among Gao’s four sets of works at this exhibition, “Revelation”, a site-specific installation, extracts the hexagonal ice crystals in light and air in time of anthelion which were then reorganized, by virtue of the tension between these crystals, into an astronomical phenomenon in the technological era.   

“Research into the Stars” takes inspiration from The Book of Changes: the same law governs the movement of the celestial bodies and the human world.      

“Eternity” and “Lunar Eclipse”, both done in 2015, make use of electromagnetic equipment, electronic components, aerospace material, etc., to respond, with complex technology, to the artist’s curiosity about the unknown space and multiple culture. We feel the earth static, but the earth is actually revolving around the sun while rotating on its axis. When viewed afar and introduced the dimension of time, the starts move in a spiral fashion, so nothing in the universe is absolutely static or changeless... 

Gao Shihe was born in Shenyang in 1982. He graduated from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, L’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), and École supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole Nice, and now teaches at the Department of Contemporary art, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts.