SHIRLEY TSE – LIFT ME UP SO I CAN SEE BETTER
2016-07-18Taking Oscar Wilde’s 1888 book “The Happy Prince and Other Tales” as her point of departure, Tse’s new body of work evokes the form of eyeballs as her sculptures address both seeing and the position from which one sees. As an adult re-reading this story, Tse was struck by the Prince’s ability to see “all the ugliness and misery of [his] city” once he was set up high on a column outside the walls of his Palace. Tse perceives Wilde’s parable as particularly prescient of our socio-economic climate, where gaps between classes and cultures are widening at an alarming rate. Analogous to Wilde’s townspeople, who were gifted the Prince’s sapphire eyes and rubies from his sword, Tse received an unexpected gift of blown glass remnants from the Estate of Miriam Wosk, a recently deceased artist. Contemplating the possibility that generosity may flow if one is able to see from a different vantage point, Tse utilizes the gestures of ascending, reaching and telescoping with the incorporation of C-stands, boom microphone stands, tripods, and stadium bleachers throughout the exhibition. Seeking a broader perspective also suggests the possibility of turning passive spectatorship into active spectatorship. Various colors of glass chunks housed in different materials exhibit themselves as heterogeneous sculptures hovering between the figurative and the abstract, the found objects and the imagined forms, the literal and the metaphorical.
Opposite – The Vehicle Series: #5, 2016
Exhibition runs through till September 3rd, 2016
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue B1
Santa Monica
Los Angeles, CA
CA 90404
