Arthub Favorite: Week Five
This is the last week before Chinese New Year so Arthub has selected something special for all our followers!
We would like to introduce you to Chinese video artist Lei Lei. Arthub previously collaborated with Lei Lei + Thomas Sauvin at OCAT in the summer of 2015 for the exhibition Crossovers. The duo’s video work Recycled was presented at the group show. Now we would like to promote Lei Lei’s upcoming exhibition in Europe, in addition to a sneak peak of his latest video work.
First, the artist is participating in a group exhibition RAREKIND CHINA in Manchester. Lei Lei is presenting his video work Big Hands oh Big Hands, Let it be Bigger and Bigger at CFCCA.
Venue: Gallery 2, CFCCA, Manchester
Duration: February 5th – April 3rd, 2016
RareKind Illustration Agency has teamed up with The Temporary by Rachel Marsden to showcase the diverse visual identities of graffiti and street artists from China and the UK. The artists have been invited to create original works that respond to the organisation’s 30-year history and the international context of street art.
Graffiti and street art is a global phenomenon still viewed as an underground ‘subculture’. This project goes beyond conventional understandings of graffiti and street art to collaborate with writers, academics, illustrators and graphic designers and will extend beyond the gallery walls into Manchester’s city centre to engage local communities through workshops, public interventions and a tour. This includes a collaboration with Outhouse Mcr’s public graffiti spaces in the Northern Quarter from January to March.
The RareKind Illustration Agency represent a diverse spectrum of artists from a variety of disciplines to produce a range of international artist-led products and projects.
As one of the video artwork contributors, Lei Lei’s Big hands oh big hands, let it be bigger and bigger illustrates a seemingly simple story, which takes place in a city, in which all of the citizens have very big hands. One child, however, is special. He has tiny hands and his head is full of peculiar thoughts. The boy constantly talks to people about these thoughts, but they dislike his long-windedness and eventually ignore him. He is very lonely. The only option he is left with is to talk to the walls.
This film was previously a project made for Think+ 2012 initiated by Southern Weekend and also nominated in the 16th HIAFF (Holland International Animation Film Festival) in 2013.
Watch Big hands oh big hands, let it be bigger and bigger here.
New Video Work
And because this artist is just too good (which is why we have chosen to work with him on several past projects), Arthub would like to introduce his latest work: Books on Books, a collage of 1980s book covers inspired by his father.
Lei Lei has made 100 collages based on “A Collection of Foreign Book’s Design”. The artist then expanded upon these collages by transforming them into 100 video loops.
Watch a preview of the work below:
The cutout patterns taken from “A Collection of Foreign Book’s Design” was published by the artist’s father in 1988, following China’s launch of the great Reform and Opening-up in 1978. The policy was initiated in an effort to embrace the rest of the world. Many leading concepts of book design were introduced in the publication and the book has had a strong impact on generations of Chinese designers since its conception.
In May 2013, Lei Lei returned to Beijing, where he took clippings from old book covers in his father’s publication “A Collection of Foreign Book’s Design”. He was driven by the idea of “revisiting through returning”. The artist was conducting graphic “rehabilitation” by collecting, cutting out and collaging these book covers. He describes the process as being somewhat clumsy and pointless. He layers these collages on top of secondhand Western books that he has acquired throughout his travels.
Though the end result is quite beautiful Lei Lei finds the entire enterprise absurd at times. In the process of making the collages, “A Collection of Foreign Book’s Design” began to slowly deteriorate, and in the end, what remained were the titles, pinup girls, cartoons and landscape photos.
The images seem even more absurd when put in this context. They are almost like some sort of delicate wrapping paper. Lei Lei believes that putting these collages onto used books from the 1980s can truly reflect their rightful place in history; it is as if the covers have finally found a home.
About Lei Lei
Lei Lei is an up-and-coming multimedia Chinese animation artist with his hands on graphic design, illustration, short cartoon, graffiti and music. In 2009, he got a master’s degree from Tsinghua University.
In 2010, his film This is LOVE was shown at Ottawa International Animation Festival and awarded The 2010 Best Narrative Short. In 2013, his film Recycled was selected by Annecy Festival and was the Winner Grand Prix shorts – non-narrative at Holland International Animation Film Festival. In 2014, he was on the Jury of Zagreb / Holland International Animation Film Festival, and he was the winner of 2014 Asian Cultural Council Grant.
Find out more about Lei Lei here.