Yuchen Xin

My artistic practice investigates cheap or discarded materials and transforming them into vibrant and emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic sculptures that hold personal, uncanny, environmental, and historic narratives of the past objects. The forms of my works are very much dictated by the choice...

My artistic practice investigates cheap or discarded materials and transforming them into vibrant and emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic sculptures that hold personal, uncanny, environmental, and historic narratives of the past objects. The forms of my works are very much dictated by the choice of materials and the investigation will start by collecting and exploring the use of ready-mades and found objects on the street. It is during the collecting and finding process that the value of the object is redefined, not as waste, but rather as an idea or method to evoke expression. All objects have functions in practical and aesthetic ways, and how they are used aesthetically in order to understand the world makes for an interesting question. In another sense, the choice of ready-mades and assemblages reflect every aspect of our lives, and through our aesthetics, indicate who we are as people.

The process of transforming collected materials into anthropomorphic characters channels my personal universe and emotions in human conditions. Anthropomorphic characters/monsters have always been the subject matter of my works. There is something very human, yet monster-like and tragic about them, as they have sensory and bodies similar to us and the but at the same time, they also appear to be uncanny and bizarre whether in the way they look or behave. Francis Bacon posed in New Atlantic (1620) that “monsters linked the natural with the artificial”. Artificial material has the ability to capture the kooky quality that monsters have, thus by the process of using found objects, observing and playing with it, we start to build up a classification system, giving attention to the strangeness, absurdities, and humour of some objects from and within the world, the land we live on and its psyche. Through the process of assembling, we make and remake ourselves via the objects that surround us. I invite viewers to recognize our own likeness through my work.