Selected Past Exhibitions
& Critical Reviews

What does it mean to find the purpose and meaning in every accident that happens along the way? The question that made itself apparent upon entering the artwork of Yukun Sun, a journey into the corners, the edges into the materials, making themselves under the process of tension. This is the tension of life, the pressure, vibration of different forces that eventually make the cracks that define the life. They live a life of their own, revealing the beauty of spontaneity, the depth of imaginary abysses and at the same time the lightness of being. The ability to distance oneself from the situation and observe almost Chinese traditional aesthetics in the interplay of lines, the delicate world, a delicate balance between the extremes, between a human and what surrounds this experience of living in the moment.

The moment changes, like water, making the cracks in solid objects, irreversible formations as a result of experiences, different circumstances all contributing to something sublime. Just like nature waves the net of cause and effect, so does Yukun Sun's artwork, making a statement, connecting the accidental and purposeful, making us question what is the spontaneity of now, this ever escaping experience of now. Rendering the delicate structure of a moss almost frozen in time, as we look at the juxtaposition between the mirrors talking to each other in shape, while the only purpose of a moss in this circumstance is to stay alive, to grow.

The process of growth, also a result of a cause and effect somehow resonates with this collection, accidental becoming purposeful, purpose redefining itself constantly, following the water, filling in the cracks of circumstances of life. Morality emerges, like a silent observer, as the world changes in the kaleidoscope of cause and effect. Yukun Sun's artwork gives us a rare insight through the distance from ourselves, we become an observer of the observed. Through different mediums, we travel through this journey from subtle inner world of paintings with the special type of omnipresence, hinting at the corners of the world, to the most expressive and dramatic pieces with the broken mirrors.

The subject of fragmentation proceeds through with the art piece: broken plate, that interacts with the material that wants to fill in the gaps, it is twisting and turning the space and time around it, reaching further away from itself. It is still limited by the predicament of human existence, conditions of gravity, space and time but somehow it finds the balance, and then it flourishes through the power of line, rooted in the traditional Chinese painting, the line plays with the viewer from unique perspectives, upright and unyielding.

This brings us back to the beginning, a moment in time interlaced by many accidents and meaningful or meaningless lines that wave the life in many directions, we just have to be the observers capable of distancing ourselves into the plane that exists outside of this intricate web.

Yukun Sun flits between varying uses of man-made and natural materials, and spatial and temporal scenarios, from sudden cracks in a mirror to gradual fostering of moss on his homemade archipelago, always in a playful manner. His practice freezes points of destruction, magnifies the minute, and isolates and crystallises moments that are easy to ignore, all for us to align our own struggles with.

In the case of Individual & Sequence, we see an installation that purifies a sense of boundaries and dualistic relationships. There is the boundary of organic forms, the stones, around the edges of a human space, along with the small mirror that offers us an opposite plane to our current state. This is followed by the contrast between Sun's white dreamlike refuge and the more easily recognisable world outside of the exhibition space. Finally, within this natural perimeter the artist has created, he harnesses a further area of space in a firm steel structure albeit with an illusory membrane that the shape's rigidity suggests. The lack of sides but hard presence of edges and corners leave the true nature of the space to the scope of our imaginations, yet ultimately ungraspable.

Between these two spatial forces and their states of dominance in this installation — the thick, forthright metal and the emptiness within its structure — is a pendulum continuously swinging, tangible to intangible, positive to negative. Which one governs the other? As our focus changes, one becomes more significant than the other, but then the other overtakes it.

Amidst this uncertain swaying, we can sit in tranquility within the boundaries of the structure. Although we can step into the space through the invisible walls or even through the doorway without opening it, in one light the wide imposing door still creates a forceful scenario of invitation, a beckoning, a magnetic obligation to follow a custom we can recognise. Microcosmic of our attraction to order, the simple shape invites a straightforward, polite response.