Anthropology of Chance

From 1 November 2014 to 26 February 2015, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Xi’an (OCAT Xi’an) will present Anthropology of Chance, London-based artist Shezad Dawood’s China debut. The occasion is marked by a complete range of the artist’s recent works; paintings, videos and film installations in various form and materials, linked by a layering of images drawn from anthropology, film, archaeology and the artist's own childhood. The result is a series of unexpected juxtapositions, which allow for a very open reading of the works and the themes upon which they might centre. OCAT Xi'an is pleased to include two commissions for the exhibition, a major textile piece and a neon installation.

Three of the works incorporate the artist's signature Saami textile collection from Pakistan, each to different effect. Through Pierced Flesh and Skin of Dreams is a series of five panels suspended from the ceiling to allow equal attention to the front and the back of each textile painting. In The Melancholy Departure of 7669, textiles are used as projection screens to achieve a poetic interweaving with the projected imagery. The large-scale painting Video Avebury is the latest example of the combination of the textile-as-canvas with painting and printing in Dawood’s two-dimensional works.

The moving image is a key area of Dawood’s expression; Anthropology of Chance includes three video installations. The first, New Dream Machine Project, is inspired by a prototype conceived by the Paris-based British artist Brion Gysin together with fellow British computer programmer Ian Sommerville in the experimental aura of 1961. As a kinetic sculpture centred on a combination of sound and light designed to emit hypnotic light waves and stimulate the brain, the Dream Machine was to be seen with the eyes closed. Dawood’s New Dream Machine Project recreates this effect, and pays tribute to Gysin’s time spent in Tangiers, Morocco and the music of Brian Jones, founding member of the Rolling Stones, in collaboration with the contemporary musician Duke Garwood.

The second piece, Trailer, is a dynamic 15-minute alternative reading of Dawood’s feature film Piercing Brightness. Conceived for display in an exhibition space, as opposed to a cinema, Trailer plays with the challenge of showing film works in an art environment. A similar concern underscores Towards the Possible Film, the third work, which is shot on location in Sidi Ifni, Morocco, a site chosen by the artist as a “Martian landscape bearing the legacy of Spanish occupation and contemporary socio-political agitation”. As the original television series Star Trek did in its time,Towards the Possible Film invokes science fiction to consider the clash of civilizations, here between an indigenous culture and the travellers who arrive on their shores.

Dawood's final piece for Anthropology of Chance is the neon sculpture Elliptical Variations III. For Dawood, neon suggests a meeting point between modernism and mysticism, which he explores using juxtapositions of geometric form and colour in which meaning and structures collide.

Date: 1 November 2014 – 26 February 2015

Opening: 1 November, 3pm

OCAT Xi’an would like to thank LUX and the Film and Video Umbrella London for their support in this exhibition.