DSL Collection

Lin Yilin, Standard Series of Ideal Residences, installation: brick, iron, wood, 1991

Walls created from steel-bars and brick. Some impenetrable to sight and movement, some leaving open spaces to look through. In their brutal texture they remind one of construction sites - or vice versa of buildings demolished to make room for something new. The walls may be part of residences, as the title of the work indicates, or walls around something, markers of inclusion and exclusion.

A graduate of the Guangzhou Art Academy Lin Yilin joined the city?s most influential artist group, the Big tail elephant working group, whose other members are Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui and Xu Tan. Since the early 1990?s they held subversive performances in public spaces - their reflection on the hysterically spinning cycles of creation, destruction and recreation determining their city?s life. Situated in the Pearl-river-delta, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shenzhen form one of the world?s fastest growing interconnected urban spaces. Among all the high-speed alterations of everything in life, one element remains strangely constant: walls. They surround living compounds, factories and universities; the very symbol of China herself, is a wall. Walls limit movement and eyesight but also give security and occasionally evoke a desire to know what?s beyond. Since the first exhibition of the Big tail elephants in 1991, where Lin presented Standard Series of Ideal Residences, the wall was a core element in his art, like in his famous 1995 performance Safely crossing Lin He Road. Documented on video, he slowly moved a small wall, made of loosely stapled hollow-bricks across one of the city?s most lively streets, one by one, until the road was crossed.

Since moving to New York in 2002, Lin has drastically changed his angle of view. Now looking out from the inside of a different culture, he has moved himself to the other side of the wall.

Christof Buettner