By The Garden

Ruoyi Shi

October 2, 2022 - December 1, 2022

Virtual and by appointment — gallery.office.space.la@gmail.com

Office Space Burbank is proud to present the debut solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based sculptor, video, and installation artist Ruoyi Shi, whose work captures a profound conjunction among Asian folklore, personal mythology, natural phenomena, and the boundaries of private memories. Within her compelling new works that communicate the space of both inside the gallery space with the exterior landscape surrounding the human made architecture, the combination of works that incorporate sculpture, installation, and videos ascribe a magical quality of challenging the formalism of how memories are created in a direct way rather than through the vicarious technologies of social media and online presence. Also Shi’s work addresses the poetry of nature particularly as a contrast to driving concepts of self-commodification within the era of the Capitalocene, where the value of personal memories are reduced to technological artifacts designed for consumerism and inevitable environmental destruction.

Of her new series, Shi says, “I often wonder whether I am the same person as the one shown on my driver’s license — She looks familiar. However, the numbers that indicate her height and weight make her into an alienated figure that I need translation to understand, and I question whether she will be 19 centimeters shorter when we stand together.

The system of measurement is indeed a new language to me, even more foreign than the words that represent these units. My learning of this new language is also stagnant at this moment, as I find it challenging for me to admit the beauty of the Imperial system of measurement — trapped in the circle of human observation, nothing is decimal in this masculine system, and the fragmented numbers are crumbling everything in my eyes.

To break into this system, I decided to introduce a new unit that was once invented and used by my parents to measure trees and their child’s luck. It is a return to the simpleness and humanism of the old days, as the only reference I need is a pair of hands of mine. I quantify nature with my human hands and then let nature quantify myself. There is no number involved, only failure or success, and eventually, I will turn the attempt into an all-success situation.

The rules are simple:

My middle fingers touching each other is one precise hug.

One precise hug equals a dad’s tree, which equals more possibilities to fulfill a wish.

My father has one tree that he adores and admires. One tree he knows nothing about but its extraordinary appearance. My only memory of this tree is that my middle fingers could reach each other while hugging and measuring this tree. It is the only truth of this tree I know, and it has become the foundation of my own measuring system.

I searched around the foreign gardens in Los Angeles, hoping to find one tree that fits in the measurement unit I brought traveling across the ocean.”

Shi’s videos entitled “One Precise Hug” and “Also One Precise Hug” analyze the semiotics of measurement within a personalized context while invoking art references to the idea of precision elicited by 1960’s and 1970’s conceptual art from Richard Long and On Kawara where the idea of a metric is deconstructed as a gauge of psychological and ontological exploration rather than capitalist valuation. By combining the personal gesture of a hug with mechanical arms and hugs as well as remote control vehicles, the artist suggests that the mechanics of a filial relationship, in this case between father and daughter, converts into a complicated dance of negotiation; the mathematics involved within an embrace also entails a Zen-like balance between the post-human and the machine. Often the subtle humor of two hands swerving in and out like race cars highlights the precarious nature of how people interact with each other during the post-COVID era.

Finally, the concept of wooden hands emphasizes the dimension of an art practice that pivots around the world of tactile information gathering and emotional connection. From a linguistic standpoint, the term “tree hugger” becomes reified into an actual performative action that is visible. The Chinese dictum which states that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” suggests that the crafting of bridges between societies, between random persons, and among art languages entails compassion as well as a fearless approach to the idea of values such as mutual understanding and kindness all too often lost in the din of a post-capitalistic society.

Ruoyi Shi is an interdisciplinary artist working with objects, writings, performances, and video installations. Inspired by folklore, oral history, mythology, and personal memory, she combines humor and fiction to construct her own poetic narratives. Through her practice, Ruoyi plays a world-building game with the figures and creatures she invents. She also invites audiences to participate in her alternative reality.

Ruoyi received her BFA degree in Sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in China. She recently completed her MFA in Art at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).