Helen Xinan Ran
@hdogfurtrader ‘s 𝘎𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘱 𝘓𝘪𝘤𝘬 is reviewed by Shuang Cai
@fkialmostforgot in ASAP Review, published by the Association for the Study of Arts of the Present, John Hopkins Press.
Link in bio to read Shuang’s take on the exhibition reviewed side by side with 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 at Accent Sisters
@accentsisters , curated by Luman Jiang, Jinyi Freya Xu, Yvonne Yitian Xu, and Shuhan Zhang.
“If Inner Feast mapped what happens within food and digestion onto artistic expression, Xinan Helen Ran’s solo show, Group Lick presents how appetite leaves traces on matter… The exhibition’s centerpiece consists of a lightweight bamboo scaffold with translucent veils looming over a salt lick block that was once fifty pounds, then eroded by over seventy ewes and lambs on a farm in New Hampshire.
….With tight visual rhythm and dynamic contrast, Group Lick shows the mundane acts of licking, pressing, and rubbing become inscribed into material as memorials of intimacy.
In Group Lick, consumption—normally marked by a lack of presence—is inscribed into material. The nonhuman—goats, dogs, butterflies—becomes the agent of alteration, showing appetite as a communal force that reshapes the monumental into something soft, uncanny, and shared. On the other hand, the polished pennies gleam recalls small acts of offering or exchange, linking the work’s cycles of erosion to the gestures of handling, giving, and spending that sustain daily consumption, except this time, by humans. Almost in the same manner as Inner Feast engages the audience to join the show, by presenting the remains of the consumed with tension and points of comparison, Ran invites the audience to fill in the gap and therefore converse with the piece.”
-Shuang Cai
