Synthetic Mobility

On the long wall next to Li’s Pushing Hands sits Ai’s Variant-a and Variant-b. Two long oil on polyester paintings, the twin works sit boldly on the white wall, demanding the viewer to draw closer and consider the intricate pipe work first drafted by the AI model Midjourney. Just as Variant IV asks the viewer to consider the melding of the industrial and the mind, Variant-a and Variant-b draws us into another maze, where Ai’s miniscule, shimmering brush strokes ask the viewer to consider how technology and humanity can weave together to form otherwise impossible visions. Slipping through and around each other, Variant-a and Variant-b turn machinery into an almost living organism. A line divides both paintings into two distinct halves in color and design, yet though the line occurs at the vertical midpoint, the pipes burst so freely within each half that the line seems to function more as a simple breath, a place where complex motions come into contact.

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To the left of Yuan Bao, in front of the windows, the other half of Li’s Pushing Hands curves over the gallery’s half-wall and pools in a shimmering tail. A fan pushes a small wave held at a tilt by two wooden planks on a clear resin box, playing with gravity, material, and force to create continuous motion. The work is stunning. Bought from Long Island City’s Home Depot, aluminum sheets used for roofing become a sculpture that lopes across space. The aluminum drapes and curves like the gallery was designed for its existence, except the true skill behind the work lies in Li’s ability to read the space, building every installation site-specific to emphasize the existing features of the space itself. Li’s Pushing Hands turns space into a shining, corporeal being, where the aluminum travels through and drapes over space based on the gallery’s existing physicality, giving shape to the air itself.

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At the base of Pushing Hands lies Ai’s Crowd, an oil on polyester painting of a photoshopped knot of Li’s aluminum sheets. The aluminum figure twists and turns like it is alive, painted in careful realist oil that captures how aluminum reflects and plays with light itself. Each aluminum strip leads into and out of itself until the painting has no beginning or end, asking the viewer to simply sit in its motion. Li’s Oops, Caught’ya! no. 3, or the caterpillar as Li jokingly calls it, sits on the adjacent wall, its sharp, crimped edges balancing the smooth motion of Pushing Hands and Crowd. By playing with the medium of aluminum, all three works create a deceptively simple conversation: what possibilities lie in our mundane materials?

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Now that we have circled the gallery, let’s return to the Yuan Bao, our starting point. Awash in the whir of Li’s fans and the swish of aluminum against hardwood from Pushing Hands, the gallery transforms space into a tangible, breathing object. Ai’s paintings glisten on the wall as if they leap off the canvas itself. Li’s Pushing Hands bring air to life, the wave-like motion and rhythmic swish of the fans lulling the mind into a meditative state. We circled the gallery counter-clockwise, but the exhibition can be viewed from any angle. The couch where Li’s friends cradled her five-month-old son during the opening, the corner behind Pushing Hands which the cleaning lady deftly reached by stepping over the aluminum during a lull. Each position allows the viewer to appreciate the exhibition anew. 

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When installing the part of Pushing Hands that drapes over the gallery wall, the aluminum wave unexpectedly became stuck at a halfway point. Originally, the wave was designed to travel to the end of the plywood slope then, stopped by friction and pulled by gravity, return to the fan. The wave ran this entire length without problems when first building the installation, but after finalizing the installation, a manufacturing dent altered the movement. On the day of the opening, Li stood in front of Pushing Hands and inspected the sculpture. She watched the aluminum waver around this new halfway point, the wave motion much smaller and more contained than it had been when first installed. After three hours, she announced the piece was done. She explained she was confident she could fix this “problem.” But Li was listening to the piece. She purposefully uses aluminum bought at Home Depot, containing all the bumps and dents of shipping, manufacturing, and storage. While she inspects every sheet to find the smoothest, the aluminum is inevitably imperfect, but this is the point. “If I can understand what the piece is saying, I leave it,” she said.

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This dialogue, perhaps, is the essence of Synthetic Mobilities. By working with Photoshop and Midjourney, Ai turns technology into a conversation where technology pushes the limits of how we can visualize the infrastructure constructing our everyday life, which Ai then brings to life through the brushwork, balance, and breath only possible in an artist’s hands. In her aluminum sculpture work, Li works with both the natural form of her material and the gallery space, using her trained eye to give space itself its own motion and expression. Taken together, Ai’s and Li’s work push the viewer to reconsider what forms we can create through the simple freedom of imagination and listening closely.

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Amidst all this motion, amidst all these glittering new forms created from aluminum and industrial infrastructure, lies a secret. Outside the window, on the fire escape, hangs a second, hidden Yuan Bao. Hanging from another steel wire, its height adjusted by a fallen, desiccated gourd found on the fire escape steps, the secret Yuan Bao asks the visitor to think once more. How much possibility lies in the world around us? 

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All images are by Ken Lee, © the artists, courtesy of Fou Gallery. The exhibition runs through November 8.

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