China Dream: Sunny Afternoon 2015 mixed media on Canvas 200x130 cm
Everlasting Echo 2022 mixed media on Canvas 200x200cm
de Sarthe is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition for Beijing- and New York-based contemporary artist Lin Jingjing. The exhibition, titled Elsewhere, features a new body of mixed media works on canvas that contemplate the collective displacement from reality caused by the near-surreal ongoing chain of global events. Integrating narratives of extraterrestrial phenomena into settings of vaguely familiar land and cityscapes, the artist constructs an alternate dimension revealed through a series of large-scale windows that line the gallery space. A poetic yet eerie speculation of the prevailing world at large, the exhibition illumines an imagined paradigm in which the boundaries of reality and unreality have seemingly dissipated – a dramatic reflection of the social, political, and technological concussions that currently reverberate around the globe. Elsewhere opens on 26 March and runs through 7 May.
Lin Jingjing’s Utopian Reality (2021-) is a series of mixed media diptychs comprised of silk thread, acrylic paint, and archival pigment print on canvas. The near-theatrical artworks depict solitary figures, some dressed in futuristic attire, whose faces are either obscured or turned away from the viewer. The composition of each work is partitioned by bold, black lines, as if the viewer is looking through a window. Two meters tall and two meters wide, these disproportionately large windows reveal picturesque sights of urban architecture and natural landscapes that stretch into the vast distance. Comprising lakes, mountains, as well as football fields and swimming pools, the imagery appears familiar yet estranged, lacking in identifiers that would allow one to place its location.
Contemplating the 21st-century modes of existence, Lin Jingjing introduces extraterrestrial narratives into the picture through forms of U.F.O.s and space capsules – a whimsical play on the invasion of technology in all aspects of life, which is growing far more noticeable in times of turbulence. Within the artwork, the entities navigate through vivid billows of clouds, mapping the topography below. In comparison to the historically negative representations of aliens in books, movies, and academia, the artist’s use of highly saturated color and contrast carries conflicting undertones of both optimism and gloom. Vaguely recalling religious imagery, vibrant arrays of light radiate from the vehicles, as if here to sweep humanity into a higher dimension.
The artist believes that the perpetual development of technology is continuously redefining our pre-existing notions of reality. On one hand, things that once seemed absurdly out of this world and science-fictional, such as semi-automatic drones, recreational space travel, and electronic currency, have now become conversations vernacular to the general populace. On the other hand, as a predecessor in paradigm-shifting science, social technology such as virtual meeting rooms and social media platforms are now fully integrated into reality, arguably to the extent that more living is done online than in real life. Corresponding to the rapid and paradoxical shift in humanity’s perception of reality, Lin Jingjing’s imagery appears dramatic yet strangely pedestrian; phenomenal yet strangely familiar. Introducing her audience to a parallel universe in which fact and fiction cannot be differentiated, the artist illuminates the potential for infinite possibilities in a world without the anchors of reality.
2021
2020
Jingjing Lin’s video projection installation You Can Trust Me: A New Dawn For America introduces, for the first time in history, an AI presidential candidate. The video installation piece delivers a passionate and detailed speech given by the AI candidate.
The AI candidate takes information, processes it, then uses its mathematical computing power to calculate gains and losses prior to making choices and taking action. While the AI candidate surpasses humans in logical reasoning and decision making, 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 at the same time satisfies the selection criteria of most voters.
In Lin’s You Can Trust Me: A New Dawn For America campaign, she poses the question: can machines be more rational or reliable than humans?
https://www.icasanjose.org/archive/archive-exhibitions/you-can-trust-me/
2019
A New Dawn for America-First AI Candidate Presidential campaign speech@Light Year 55-Video projected onto the Manhattan Bridge, New York City
Thursday, November 7, 2019 | 7 - 10pm
Lin Jingjing Video work :“A new Dawn for America-First AI candidate presidential campaign speech” be part of “Light Year 55- Video Art Exhibit projected onto the Manhattan Bridge @
Thursday, November 7, 2019 | 7 - 10pm *****Best place to view: from the Pearl Street Triangle
Curated by: John Ensor Parker
Participating Artists: Gene Kogan, Sophia Crespo, Sarah Meyohas and Lin Jing Jing
Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in recent times and is enlisted in numerous fields including finance, healthcare, education, transportation, meteorology and military to name a few. Today a hand full of artists utilizes AI, or Machine Learning as medium of their creative process to create paintings, film, music and video art.
This exhibition is the first publicly presented video exhibition of it’s kind presenting three video works generated by artists utilizing AI and one who, while utilizing conventional video art making processes, questions our readiness and acceptance of the developing role of Artificial Intelligence.
ABOUT LIGHT YEAR:
LIGHT YEAR is an ongoing project presented by 3_Search (Leo Kuelbs Collection, Glowing Bulbs and John Ensor Parker) in partnership with the DUMBO Improvement District and NYC DOT. Originally created for the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage in DUMBO, Brooklyn, in celebration of the United Nations’ declaration of 2015 as the Year of Light and Light Art, LIGHT YEAR has become an international project, with presentations in DUMBO on the First Thursday of every month, as well as in Berlin, and online. Since its launch, LIGHT YEAR has hosted the work of over 150 artists and curators from around the world.
One Hundred Percent (2019) Installation 400 x 500cm x 80cm
Lin Jinging’s installation work: One Hundred Percent (2019) was included in the School of Visual Arts exhibition Look Both Ways: The Illicit Liaison Between Image and Information. In the installation work, Lin replaces the material with the word fantasy in a strip of commonplace, mass-produced clothing care labels.
The exhibition was curated by Debbie Millman, chair of the MPS Branding program at SVA. The exhibition brought together a wide range of typographic work from 60 individual artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Shepard Fairey, Dave Eggers, Deborah Kass, Jenny Holzer, Miranda July, Kim Gordon, and more, from Millman’s personal collection and beyond.
Look Both Ways showcased the many ways in which words, text and information influence art, design, literature and music. Bold typographic expression has become the cultural currency of communication and the centerpiece of connection. Objects and experiences all around us now contain an inscription, an impression or a point of view. Our bodies, clothing, public events, sports, politics and even the products we consume have given people, by way of social media and the Internet, an instantaneous way to communicate globally. On an intimately personal level, tattoos have assumed the atavistic power that religious amulets once had to convey messages about ourselves, with the immediate power of images and words. This dynamic is evident today in all disciplines of visual communications, reflecting the condition of our culture.
Lov-Lov Published @Asia Pacific-Magazine
Installation view of “Lov-Lov Shop,” at de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019
Installation view of LIN JINGJING’s You Need to Be Careful with Me: I Fall in Love and I Fall in Love Forever, 2019, six-channel video installation with color and sound: 8 min 26 sec, installation: 130 × 224 cm, at “Lov-Lov Shop,” de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019
LIN JINGJING, The Affection You Deserve, 2019, archival pigment print on canvas, 160 × 100 cm
Installation view of LIN JINGJING’s The Human Element and Why We Don’t Need It, 2019, LED light, acrylic, 150 × 100 cm, at “Lov-Lov Shop,” de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019
Brady Ng is ArtAsiaPacific’s Guangzhou desk editor.
Lin Jingjing’s “Lov-Lov Shop” is on view at de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, until July 13, 2019.
Solo show"Lov-Lov Shop" @de Sarthe Gallery Hong Kong
de Sarthe is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition for Beijing- and New York- based contemporary artist Lin Jingjing, titled, 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. Lov-Lov Shop opens on May 25 and runs through July 13.
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.
Escape From,Escape To@
SVA Chelsea Gallery
New York
"Promise" Photo Series Published @Photographyofchina.com
MY PROMISE FOR YOUR HAPPINESS
"It was a kind of existence that comes from the infinite propagation of reality. Though this infiniteness is not real, it is enough to be absurd. It is a different kind of truth within untruth, the truth of invisible truth, the untruth that overturns truth, the persistence of absurdity. In fearless and certainty, it creates power". Lin Jingjing
Lin Jingjing 林菁菁 is a conceptual visual artist whose work deals primarily with social-political themes. She is known for the wide range of approaches in her art, explores the depths of social and personal identity in the context of modern society, often examining themes such as confusion and quest, existence and absence, constraint and resistance through a lens of paradox. Of particular focus is how individuals define themselves amongst the effects of the outside world,vis-à-vis culture, politics, history and the economy. Her artwork spans performance, installation, painting, mixed media, video, sound, LED lights. The surreal effect created via this method immerses the viewers into another consciousness.
In “Promise for Your Happiness“, she would like to provoking people to think about the paradoxical reality and the virtual illusion that we all experience every day, as well as the sense of geographical belonging and the new generation of 'mental orphans'. Her purpose is to doubt promises and their persistence, arguing their importance in today's society and how we all must find the possible in the impossible through skepticism. Lin Jingjing’s oeuvre is exemplified by these types of mixed media works; embroidered colourful 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.
Jingjing ’s works have been exhibited in major public museums including Neues Kunstforum in Cologne(Germany), the National Art Museum of Chile in Santiago, the Long Museum in Shanghai, the Ivam in Valencia(Spain), the Kunstraum in Vienna, Galeria Herold in Bremen, Saint Mary’s University Art Museum in Halifax(Canada), the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery in Philadelphia, Ljubljana Castle in Slovenia, the Tikanoja Art Museum in Vaasa (Finland), the Nanjing Museum, the Du Land Modern Art Museum (Shanghai) and Song Zhuang Art Museum in Beijing.