The Anti-functioning Gesture
When I first visited the artist Lyn Liu’s studio in East Williamsburg, I noticed that the clock in the building’s foyer showed the wrong time. It was not working.
In Liu’s current solo exhibition H-Dropping at Kasmin at Casa Siza, Mexico City, there is a painting of a clock—the pointers, like a broken steelyard, hold two weights on their bottoms. Time is disrupted by the external force, and the dial is unable to carry out the task of a scale. This painting, Golden hour, reminded me of the moment when I was staring at the stopped clock in Brooklyn—is it only when an ordinary object becomes dysfunctional that we would eventually realize its presence or consider it worth noticing?
The exhibition title derives from a linguistic phenomenon “H-dropping,” which refers to the omission of the “H” sound in some languages and dialects. While reading a French magazine, Liu recalled a pronunciation rule she had learned during her study of French—H, this tall, conspicuous letter, is unpronounced. It seems that this muted "H" refused to perform its role in speech, triggering Liu’s thinking of “anti-functioning.”
For her 11 paintings in H-Dropping, Liu captures futile acts and creates defunct objects, leaving them in absurd scenarios. In Blind telescope, a person looks through a telescope, its lens facing the table while the other end is attached to a paper roll covered with mathematical formulas. What they see might be complete darkness. In Art school, pencils are tied to each finger of a person, as seemingly extended but, in fact, clumsy organs, hindering any actions. Telescope and pencil, implements often associated with discovery or creativity, in Liu’s paintings, point to the misuse of tools and inefficiency of endless practice, implying her witty critique of rigid educational systems.
According to David Graeber, if play is an expression of human freedom, then work imposed by others represents a total lack of freedom. The loss of umbrella depicts an array of figures who seem to be deprived from being free. While chasing a storm, two people in the front have lost their red umbrellas. It is as if holding umbrellas is their task, and they have become accustomed to their work that they can no longer escape from it—their bodies awkwardly remain in the same position, hands raised, moving towards the void. Notably, these figures’ shared fate seems manipulated by the tailor who holds scissors and oversees their movements.
This controlling mindset is similarly applied to plants. In Tied tulips, the buds are tied with black bands, suspending the natural process of blooming. In the eyes of florists, the duty of flowers might be to stay fresh and to look pleasant. However, this for-profit and productivity-driven force is reversed in Stalemate, where a horse blocks the way of a car, and neither the engine nor traffic lights would have any effect here. The horse, perhaps unconsciously, presents a denial of efficiency defined by our human society.
Some scenes in Liu’s works are not only satires of reality but are made real, extending into the physical space. She designed and produced some objects featured in Inutilities—a spoon with a hole, a pair of gloves with their cuffs sewn shut, and a table cloth with red circles signifying the displacement of things. They are meant to be gifted to audiences, detached from their utility and economic value.
In the artist book accompanying H-Dropping, the images of Liu’s paintings are coated with a thermochromic ink, which has been degrading and will gradually leave all the images in black. The book, like many objects in Liu’s paintings, relinquishes its excepted role. In a world where things are produced to have functions and work is meant to serve a purpose, dysfunction is not a failure but a gesture of defiance.