Important Collection:

Ivam Museum (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno), Valencia,Spain

Museum Macan (The Museum of Morden and Contemporary Art in Nusantara), Jakarta, Indonesia

Chile National Museum of Fine Art ,Santiago,Chile

The Mountain Group Museum , Taiwan

National Art Museum of China,Beijing, China 

Liu Hai Su Art Museum,Shanghai,China

He Xiang Ning Art Museum,Shenzhen,China

Tai Da Museum,Tian jing, China

Museum of the nation,Lima, Peru

White Box Art Museum,Beijing,China

Long Museum, Shanghai,China

  Dr Monica Merlin’s interview of Lin Jingjing on Tate’s website

ISBN/SKU:9881506395

ISBN Complete:978-9881506399

Premium Color 11.7 x 11.9  inches

Page Count: 280

Spine Width: 1.4  in

Weight: 3.4lbs

Email:

LJJart@gmail.com

In 2009, Lin held her largest solo exhibition at the Song Zhuang Art Museum in Beijing,

occupying 26,000 square feet of museum space and reaching nearly 40 feet in height.

Curated by the renowned independent art critic and curator of contemporary Chinese art, Li

Xian Ting, often referred to as the “Godfather of the Chinese contemporary avant-garde.”

The exhibition featured 11 large-scale installations, 22 large-format photographs, 12 videos, 18

paintings, and 38 mixed-media works, encompassing over a decade of Lin'd  artistic output.

This exhibition named  "I Want to Be with You Forever",  is filled with paradoxes, stubbornness, and near despair, as if it is an all-or-nothing gamble with everything riding on this expectation.

It places all hope and meaning of life into "you." This "you" does not merely refer to an individual but more evidently represents a belief, a symbol of belonging, a devotion to culture, or perhaps

an indescribable desire.

2009年，林在北京宋庄美术馆举办了她迄今为止最大规模的个人展览，占据了26,000平方英尺的展馆空间，展厅高度接近40英尺。展览由著名的独立艺术评论家和中国当代艺术策展人栗宪庭策划，他常被称为“中国当代先锋艺术的教父”。 此次展览展出了11件大型装置作品、22幅大幅摄影作品、12部视频作品、18幅绘画作品以及38件混合媒介作品，涵盖了林十余年的艺术创作。 展览的标题是：《我想永远和你在一起》，这个句子充满了悖论、固执与近乎绝望，仿佛是一场孤注一掷的赌博，将所有希望和生命的意义寄托于“你”。这个“你”不仅仅指向个体，更显然地代表了一种信仰、一种归属的象征，或者是一种对文化的献身，亦或是一种难以言喻的渴望。

林菁菁的创作基于个人经验，这种经验虽来源于公共文化，却牢牢掌握在个体手中。其作品主要是关于人的，人与人之间的关系，还有人的内在及外在缺陷，均被艺术家以极为精致繁复的方式转接到社会传统之上。通过刺绣的方式，对基础材料进行调整，改变或"伤害"，从内容和审美两方面来整合新的关联。 此次展览以装置，物品和照片为主。其作品通常与行为性的表现方法结合在一起，无论何种媒介。其艺术语言的特点是缄默与显而易见的不情愿。无论如何，她所表达的内容极为强烈，超越了作品自身的美感，令观者直面存在主义的主题。 在将自身经验非个体化，转为共性经验的过程中，艺术家并未局限于自己熟悉的文化。通过简单的艺术手段，艺术家得以描绘出一幅关于人类及其恐惧，渴望和欲念的跨文化图像。

“Promise again for the first time”, is the first solo exhibition of Lin Jingjing in Hong Kong.Lin uses her practice to reflect on social conditions and the paradoxical realities of daily life – urgently questioning the apparent “benefits” of China’s economic escalation. Lin Jingjing’s oeuvre is exemplified by her mixed media works; embroidered colorful cotton threads that impose geometric patterns over reproduced monochromatic photographs of life in China. Careful stitches conceal segments of the composition, such as the face or shadow of a human figure, seeking to address issues of homogenization and the individual morphing into a component of the economic machine. Featuring a continuum of works from the “My Promise for Your Happiness” series that Lin Jingjing conceived in 2011, the exhibition will include paintings, mixed media, video and installations.  The impetus for the artworks shown in this exhibition came from a serendipitous moment in late 2013, as Lin Jingjing disembarked from an airplane. Without provocation Lin Jingjing felt compelled to turn around as she stepped onto an aircraft access ladder only to watch the airplane roll away – leaving her on a set of stairs that lead to nowhere. This happening stood as a metaphor for upward social mobility and China’s new found prosperity to the artist, leading Lin Jinging to question the apparent fortuity of the country’s unprecedented economic growth.Lin Jingjing became increasingly affected by this experience, and used her artwork to interrogate her nation’s economic dominance. Exploring the theme of migrant workers, she could not disregard the extreme happening that occurs during the Lunar New Year. The commonly documented “great migration” of Spring indicates the beginning and the end of the cycle of life for these displaced workers – traversing millions of collective miles for this one important occasion. The spectacle represents a mental desire for a sense of belonging, and the allusion that going home geographically will fulfill this, yet often when they arrive they realize a sense of disconnection from their original habitat, the way home is already lost and broken. The family reunion happens quickly in confusion. After the festivities, people leave their so-called hometowns and thus the loop repeats year after year. This theatric exercise has produced generations of mental orphans, who are trapped in lacunas of belief and cultures. Lin Jingjing’s artworks survey the phenomenon, of individuals lost in a sea of economic development on a country-wide scale.As China undergoes a period of increasing affluence, up rises the collective realization that this ritual is a futile exercise of self-deception. The resulting consensus is a quiet buzzing ridicule of reality, helpless resignation, with the bottom line equating to the basic principles of survival. In an era of ruthless high-speed operation, each of us has become a small part in the global factory of production. Lin Jingjing implores the audience to question their silence, question the possibilities and limits and recognize the dissipation of spirit.

for each person and invites her audience to consider these interpretations, and to compare and contrast them to the wider national context.

The exhibition features installations alongside Lin Jingjing’s surreally-colored canvases, allowing the viewer to lose their sense of reality and become immersed in hers, journeying through her imagination as she guides them through her interpretation of contemporary society.

The title, Tomorrow Was Wonderful, suggests an idea of looking back from the future with a sense of omniscience or hindsight at these personal and national aspirations with a sense of judgment.

In this time dominated by the idea of the Chinese Dream, the future is beautiful, a time of progress and achievement.

However, Lin suggests that perhaps when we get there, we will look back on our visions and aspirations for tomorrow and see warm memories fraught with an optimistic naivety rather than a reflection of reality.

This prompts us to consider this possibility not only in relation to the Chinese Dream, but also in relation to both our own lives and to history – past, present and future.

Think back to years ago. What did you think your life would be like today? What were your hopes for the future? Now, consider the present. Is it everything you dreamed it would be, or did expectation exceed reality? These are the questions Lin Jingjing asks her audience to reflect upon as they take in her works. These hopes and dreams and their discord with what comes to fruition are relevant not just on a personal scale, but also on a communal or national one. What are we told to believe; how many of our unrealized dreams were fed to us by outside forces, and what was their motive for leading us to wish for such things?

TAKE OFF is a multimedia solo exhibition of all new work by the Beijing- and New York-based contemporary artist Lin Jingjing. Adopting a methodology of paradox, the show discusses intrinsic uncertainty, repressed anxieties and the loss of individuality in contemporary society. 

The title TAKE OFF refers to the structure of the exhibition itself, which transforms the gallery space into an international airport in the imagined nation of the People's Republic of Dreamland (PRD). Elaborating on a theory established by the French anthropologist Marc Augé (1935-), Lin Jingjing explores the current and future ramifications of airports and their facilities as "Non-Places," where identity as an independent individual becomes utterly insignificant. She submerges audiences into her absurdist and imagined future airport where, despite extravagances and leaps in technology, troubling reflections on our current world are laid bare. Through a carefully weaved series of connections, several of the artworks in the show function in relation to one another and collectively produce a powerfully critical narrative.

A quietly terrifying component of the show is the advertisement for a completely fabricated, but not unimaginably powerful mobile phone application. Presented as a light-box identical to ones found in airports across the world, Superzoom publicizes an app that is highly recommended by—and in fact produced by—the PRD government. It promises to assist an individual with quicker passage through customs and to make new friends as well as business connections. However, this is achieved only at the cost of forfeiting the entirety of your private information.  Through Superzoom Lin Jingjing makes it clear that although the information age has allowed access to incredible new experiences, it also has exposed our personal information unreservedly, making it easy for private information to be stolen and violated, rendering the individual defenseless.

In response to Superzoom there is a more discretely presented advertisement for an app called Perfect ID . Produced by a company called My Quality Life LLC, Perfect ID is a crack for the Superzoom app. It prevents monitoring and forges relevant information to compromise attempts at data gathering. It promises to provide technology that disrupts Superzoom at any time. However, as the app interferes with government attempts to gather information, My Quality Life LLC must not advertise their app explicitly. They are forced to publicize in more subtle ways and this includes sponsoring public service advertising.

Critical Thinking Matters: It's Time to Reinvent, Rethink, Re-strategize, and Grow is one of these public service advertisements. Sponsored by My Quality Life LLC, the advert appears to encourage positive social thinking, yet it is also a veiled criticism of the Superzoom app. Once viewers piece together that the promotional message is linked with Perfect ID, they realize that the system at work is similar to the commercial interests and ideals of our current social reality, where despite clear rules and cultural understandings, there is a long standing series of unspoken rules that govern business and politics.

The largest artwork in the show is comprised of twelve colorful, transparent, and hollow boxes made of acrylic glass that are arranged in a line to form a row of rainbow-like colors. Titled This Is the Beginning of My Desperation, the boxes have texts from twelve self-help and motivational books cut out of their fronts and backs. The text includes the names of the books, authors, and publishing houses, as well as attractive promotional messages. Referencing the astounding quantity of self-help publications produced, Lin Jingling prompts viewers to contemplate the extent to which we yearn for joy and happiness, and to also consider the deep helplessness many feel. The urgent nature of the texts on the colorful boxes and the emptiness of the boxes themselves form a paradox that Lin Jingling hopes exposes larger ideas regarding contemporary society and identity.

Lov-Lov Shop. Lov-Lov (2018- ) is an absurd but poetic interdisciplinary project that explores the meaning and significance of humans in the age of artificial intelligence. As humanity pays for our growing greed and never-ending desires, morality is continually challenged and evaded, resulting in our collective ignorance and denial. 

Technological advancement continues unabated under the guise of efficiency and convenience. The new era of Automation Technology – namely artificial intelligence (AI) – is imbued with potential while raising unprecedented concerns. The best chess players in the world are no longer human beings, and Lin’s Lov-Lov Shop asks:  “What if the best lovers and life partners were also no longer human?” The 6-channel video You Need To Be Careful With Me: I Fall In Love And I Fall In Love Forever (2019) simulates an engaging commercial television advertisement. Using appropriated footage and images from movies and the internet in combination with dynamic commercial language, the artist introduces the audience to an all-new AI lover. While the video resembles a public service announcement, the world it presents appears dystopian. The seemingly affectionate title is suggestive of a double entendre as the word “forever” may be implying non-human. In Lov-Lov’s world, consumers can freely download the appearance, voice, behavior, memory, wisdom, and even humor of any human in history, such that they may maximize their happiness and satisfaction.

Taking over half the space, Lov-Lov Shop (2019) is an advertising campaign that promotes different models of ideal companions using exaggerated catchphrases. Expanding beyond romantic partners, the triptych Unconditional Love and Companionship On Call (2019) showcases a society constructed entirely of AI and customized based on Lov-Lov’s data analysis of the user’s upbringing and need for relationships and social validation. In this society, humans live unburdened by relationships as the AI takes into account our desires for social harmony, intimacy, and a sense of belonging. AI incorporates these needs into a completely closed and manageable system, eliminating the possibility for unwanted conflict and drama. Through this series, Lin asks desperately: “In a world perfect as such, will humans willingly terminate their relationships with other human beings (and even all other natural life) and live happily ever after in an artificial simulation?”

The absurdity of this notion is amplified in Lin’s Lov-Lov pharmacy series We Have Solutions (2019). This corresponding series advertises a medication regime perfect for indolent individuals. If you are too lazy to order an AI companion, all you need is a pill to experience love again and again – it is that simple and easy. Love, trust, friendship, respect, even spirituality, mysteriousness, and confidence – all are attainable, and all you need to do is sit back and enjoy. Is this not the shortcut to altering minds and reality that many long for?

Second To None (2019) is the slogan for Lin’s 2020 Presidential Election project, in which she encourages voters to opt for a socially responsible AI president.

Lin’s cubic projection installation A New Dawn For America (2019) introduces, for the first time in history, an AI presidential candidate. Cast through five projections atop a single white cube, the video delivers a passionate and detailed speech given by the AI candidate. The candidate tackles the most sensitive and complex of social issues and demonstrates its ability as a future leader with daring vision. While AI surpasses humans in logical reasoning, information processing, and making intelligent decisions, it is also untethered from biological and personality flaws, and incapable of personal scandals and political tyranny. It is the most reliable and trustworthy candidate in terms of fulfilling public service and civil obligations, and it satisfies the selection criteria of most voters.

A neon light installation mirrors the cube. In theory, it is a book written by an AI author, titled, The Human Element And Why We Don’t Need It.

Using paradoxical concepts and humorous language, Lin Jingjing comments on the direction of our political, cultural, and social development. Lov-Lov Shop discusses the influence of reality on how we perceive general humanity and the unease we share as a collective. The artist hopes that the pressure of living in the technological era will urge us to reconsider what it means to be human.