OFLUXO

The concept of scale and distance between human body and environment has been changed under the restraint of social activities. The presentation of Sydney Shen at Liste features series of the artist’s recent works, departing from her explorations of the examination of body representation and the reconstruction of mundane reality. Expanding from the idea of constructed domestic space with a twist of scale modification that the artist plays with, the presentation shy away from recreating a specific physical space, but instead, the phantom of one. Glasses, rings, earrings and earring backs, the highlighting of unclaimed daily objects competes with the body that activates them, present or absent, reframing the representation of body through Sydney’s weaponization of self-complacency. 

Continuing her interests in the fine line between endurance and impulsivity that examines the limitation of mentality through the terminus of the physical body, Sydney Shen (b. 1989) borrows the form from daily ornament objects and magnifies them into sets of human-scale sculptures. By weaponizing familiar items into an abnormal scale, Shen aims to investigate extreme body modification culture and to combat with the historically inherited institutional aesthetics, giving new meanings to the concept of individuality for social- and self-appraisal under the changing landscape of hierarchy system. 

In this project, a series of works employing the structure of earring backs will be presented through wall-mounted sculptures and installation. By enlarging the ordinary item, usually tiny, frequently lost, and intended to be hidden or neglected, Shen strips the earring back from its protogenetic context and reconstructs it into an unsettling analogy of control. Earring, originally serves as ornament for body, here redefines the body as ornament, introducing a tension between subject and objecthood. This drolly abject ambivalence toward free will—a desire to relinquish control to superhuman power—is reinforced by the appropriated scale of the earring backs, which eerily evokes wind-up keys on the backs of mechanical toy dolls. The earring backs on the wall suggest the horror of immurement, immobilization, and the paradox of matter existing simultaneously in the same place as an entirely different thing. Shen inverts the typical use of the jewelry form by implying the “innards” have become the final ornament, the displaying “front” of the earring. Yet a disturbing moment arises with the visual pun through its dark humor, as the existence of the other side dissolves into an assumption, a far more horrendous void in which the distinction between oneself and the sphere one inhabits is no longer sensible.

Spring-loaded with cruelty, the floor installation Micki & Mecki (Knopf im Ohr) (2021) depicts a human-scale earrings-on-card scenario where the delicacy of self-decoration is replaced by the abjection of animal taxidermy foam. The shape of it alludes to both a merchandise display and punitive stocks used for public humiliation. The taxidermy foam form is macabre. It is ghastly as it arouses the viewers as familiar. The visible musculature reinforces the violence of the object’s use as the form on which the skin of an animal is stretched: the horror of being stripped, exposed, conflating within and without, death by a thousand cuts.

Starting with repetitive decorative motifs and a dancelike shuffling of materials emanating from her various inspirations and references, the artist introduces an oneiric conjuncture of uncanniness and cuteness. The titles of her works, Macki (Jet de Sang, Right) (2021), Mucki (Jet de Sang, Left) (2021) and Zotty (Violet Gland) (2021) are inspected from Steiff Teddy Bears “Knopf im Ohr” or “button in ear”, which are recognized by their labels worn like earrings on the plushes. Macki, Mucki, and Zotty, named after the twin brothers and their cousin from Steiff hedgehog characters, hints at the pieces’s status as incentive objects like child toys or hunting trophies, yet connote a luxury quality hedging between the sumptuous toy brand and the negligibility of earring backs. Engraved with the Latin phrase, “Cupio Dissolvi” which means “I wish to be dissolved”, Kewpie (Cupio Dissolvi) (2021) implies longing for the ultimate purity to dissolve the earthly body and achieve spiritual eternity in the afterlife. The desire to transcend the body is pure yet profane and masochistic, as the tension between holiness and self-destruction suggests that there is a macabre and horrific side to even the purest thoughts.