Melting Rock, Still Wind
Artists: Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao), Andrea Galano Toro, Shuyi Cao, Kees van Leeuwen
Curated by Yindi Chen
Aug 11– 20, 2023
山中suplexの別棟「MINE」／Yamanaka Suplex annex "MINE"
GALLERY 02 NANEI Shinmachi bld. 2-9-4 Shinmachi, Nishi-ku, Osaka 550-0013, Japan
Melting Rock, Still Wind inquires into the interrelation of the changing and the unchangeable: the seemingly static rock can be reshaped by external forces, and the lingering wind is able to cross multiple areas and eras. The meanings of the name of the exhibition space “MINE”—“peak” in Japanese, the top of a mountain, and “mine” in English, the excavation in the earth—also act as a nexus between things that are above and under the ground, visible and unseen.
Featuring photography, sculpture, sound pieces, and video installations, the exhibition brings artists from different lands to share their ongoing research on landscapes where human and natural forces intertwine with one another and become indiscernible. Following lava, minerals, microbes, and abandoned shelters, the artists trace overlooked matters and untold narratives and search for haunting pasts that dwell in the remains of human extraction and reconstruction of the Earth.
The story in Shuyi Cao’s work traverses different spatial and temporal scales, revealing the lives affected by technology operating on geological strata. In Andrea Galano Toro’s video, we travel with a microbe from the Atacama desert to our laptop, speculating the connections between mining, dictatorship, and human relations to earth. The artist collective Alchemyverse records sound and vibrations in lava, water, and bunkers to create haptic encounters that transmit unheard frequencies. Kees van Leeuwen documents his field visits to nuclear bunkers in Europe and explores the interactions between artificial and natural processes.
The artists attempt to think and feel with more-than-human substances, questioning the division of life and nonlife and looking for the possibilities of knowing—to move away from the humancentric perspective and probe the entanglements of histories, geopolitics, and ecologies.
exhibition booklet
exhibition webpage
exhibition review by Manabu Miki on eTOKI
exhibition review by Santo Oshima on PaperC