The Remnants of Images D
Hu Jieming
胡介鸣
Production date
2013
Object Detail
Media
multichannel video installation, filing cabinet, LED screens, glass
Measurements
185 x 90 x 52 cm
Notes
The Remnants of Images (2013) presents the viewer with flickering animated photographs on LED screens, incorporated into a surreal landscape of old office furniture.
Collecting images from family photograph albums, state-sanctioned historical images, and random photographs from the vast repository of the internet, Hu Jieming assembled an archive of Chinese history that starts with the year of his birth and continues to the present day. These images are fragments of the collective and personal past, rendered absurd and touching by the artist’s activation of still images into the endlessly repeated movements of ‘gif’ animation. The somewhat unnerving effect is enhanced by the mechanical opening and closing of the drawers and doors of the scarred, institutional metal filing cabinets that contain these faded memories. Hu describes the discarded furniture that he reclaims in his works as ‘friends and companions’ of a shared past. These cabinets of curiosity now evoke the dusty archive of a government office, perhaps a Kafka-esque ‘Department of Public Recollection’. And the sound of the drawers sliding open and shut mimics memory’s selective and transient nature.
The Chinese title of Remnants of Images has a slightly different connotation: the term ‘Can Ying’ refers to the physiological effect of an ‘after-image’ that seems projected onto the retina even after we close our eyes, flickering like a silent movie inside the eyelid. In its gentle yet discomfiting physical presence, with multiple images flickering in a darkened space, The Remnants of Images reminds us of the inevitable passage of time, in the manner of a memento mori. Things and people once valued and cherished are no longer considered important: in China, especially, there is an urgent search for new values to replace the obsolescent ideals of collectivism.
Collecting images from family photograph albums, state-sanctioned historical images, and random photographs from the vast repository of the internet, Hu Jieming assembled an archive of Chinese history that starts with the year of his birth and continues to the present day. These images are fragments of the collective and personal past, rendered absurd and touching by the artist’s activation of still images into the endlessly repeated movements of ‘gif’ animation. The somewhat unnerving effect is enhanced by the mechanical opening and closing of the drawers and doors of the scarred, institutional metal filing cabinets that contain these faded memories. Hu describes the discarded furniture that he reclaims in his works as ‘friends and companions’ of a shared past. These cabinets of curiosity now evoke the dusty archive of a government office, perhaps a Kafka-esque ‘Department of Public Recollection’. And the sound of the drawers sliding open and shut mimics memory’s selective and transient nature.
The Chinese title of Remnants of Images has a slightly different connotation: the term ‘Can Ying’ refers to the physiological effect of an ‘after-image’ that seems projected onto the retina even after we close our eyes, flickering like a silent movie inside the eyelid. In its gentle yet discomfiting physical presence, with multiple images flickering in a darkened space, The Remnants of Images reminds us of the inevitable passage of time, in the manner of a memento mori. Things and people once valued and cherished are no longer considered important: in China, especially, there is an urgent search for new values to replace the obsolescent ideals of collectivism.
Accession number
2013.217