Wenhua Shi
2021
Gutai
Wenhua Shi
In Gutai, Wenhua Shi returns to the locations of his childhood in Wuhan and, with the encyclopaedic intensity of a collector, catalogues their textural qualities, the way they look at certain times of day, on 16mm film using in-camera edits; named after the Japanese Gutai movement (in Chinese ‘gu tai’ translates to ‘body tool’), Shi’s collected images speak to the bodily and immediate, a way of navigating, knowing and remembering place.
Gutai
Die Nacht
Wenhua Shi
Prelude to Senses of Time [a solo exhibition by Wenhua Shi at RCM: the Museum of Classic Art, Nanjing]: depicts the lyrical and poetic passage of time. The work reflects on time and focuses on defining subjective and perceptual time with close attention to stillness, decay, disappearance and ruins. Dedicated to Phil Solomon.
Die Nacht
The Rose
Wenhua Shi
The Rose, Shi's most recent experimental piece, alters the space, where a newly planted rose is overgrown through iron fence. The film explores the perception of the relationship between foreground and background. The process of editing pays tribute to the optical toy, a bird in a cage, from the pre-cinema period.
The Rose
Because the Sky Is Blue
Wenhua Shi
Muybridge captured the galloping horse 140 years ago in a brief 12 frames. The duration of today's social media video clips is similar to Muybridge's breavity. Wenhua reimagines what subject Muybridge would capture today using cyanotype to reprint the individual frames to create the final piece.
Because the Sky Is Blue
