Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1990
China
Tabula Rasa
Tant’s artistic practice focuses on the moments within everyday flow that can be used for resistance and questioning. These frozen moments may be simple, elegant, slightly comedic, or even absurd. The form of materials forms her sculpture. There is no precise boundary; they are dispersed yet mutually constrained. She excels at linking, arranging, combining, or constructing multiple connections between different objects and words, skillfully placing the contradictions hidden within organic life. The state of her works seems to want to return to some fundamental rules and rhythms while faintly attempting to break them. Tant Yunshu Zhong (b. 1990, Wuhan) currently lives and works in Shanghai.
This artwork seems to be a summary of the artist's creative logic: a scene of constraint and struggle. All the constraints gather in the central, cloud-like mist, where the weightless mist tugs at the lead blocks at the corners. Unlike a bag of sand, or a piece of steel used as a counterweight, the lead chain that can be twisted at will is overlooked in terms of its weight. It appears agile and cunning, capable of slipping away from the scene like a snake at any moment. All balance collapses instantaneously.
Respect nature as well as the state-of-being of unnatural objects
This is a set meal made of artificial materials. Just like the imitation meats (usually made from tofu/beans and have certain qualities of meat) in some vegetarian restaurants, the set meal includes fake foods made from sponge, plastic and ceramic. It reflects what happens on our dining table, where we want the food to be as natural as possible, but they are inevitably products of industrial processes.
The desired overall state of the artwork presents a connected and scattered posture, which can be understood as the lines of the rockery in a garden (stripped of its solid form, only retaining the edges and turning points). Within the outline of this rockery, viewers can find familiar everyday objects such as a coffee cup, a car, and a bench. Their vision is seemingly blurred by some more abstract elements, such as a kitchen frying pan larger than a vase. The process of engaging with the installation can be likened to the experience of browsing a traditional Chinese scroll painting, searching for "fi ...
In this hand-made closed ring-shaped installation, PVC becomes the thread, and calf leather the cloth. Natural materials originally used in craft are turned into plastic as time goes by. Looking from afar, it may look as soft as furs, but it can clean dirt just like a cleaning brush.
Tant Yunshu Zhong (b. 1990, Wuhan) lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include: LISTE 2023 (Basel, 2023); The Rearview Landscape, or a Trip of Ownership, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) (Beidaihe, 2022); The Force Temple, Tank Shanghai (Shanghai, 2019); Questioning Photography Now, Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art (Chongqing, 2018); I Do (Not) Want to Be Part of Your Celebration, Qiao Space and Tank Shanghai Project Space (Shanghai, 2017); The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2017).