James Gui, Untitled, 2019. Mixed media, dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist.
BAAA Gallery’s new exhibition, James Gui:
Two Roomspresents the artist’s new sculptural work and his
photographs from the past. Mainly working with the medium of photography, the
artist recently adopted a new artistic medium in creating an architectural model
of an imaginative house. The design of the house is based on the idea of two
rooms, which became the title for this exhibition.
Rather than exist as two independent entities from one another, the two rooms exist foreach other. The relationship or tension between the two rooms generated his sculpture, and the artist
intuitively and smoothly integrated the two rooms into a house coupled with
its landscape.
Duality, push, pull, water, and wave are the keywords that the artist
extracted from his sculpture, and then used as a filter to select photographs to
display in this exhibition. With the sculpture as a center piece, Gui created
different dynamics among his sculpture and photographs in the
exhibition space. The artist captured these photographs while on a journey to
several different countries such as Iceland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, and
China, while the house - the sculpture - is siteless. The house is full of color
and playfulness, in comparison to the photographs that are desaturated in
color, capturing staticity and calmness of the cities.
For Gui, this exhibition is an outcome of his own study about his work, as well
as experimentation in delving into the relationship between his photographs and
the sculpture. Incorporating the exhibition space as an important element in
creating this field of relationships, the artist invites viewers to think
together how the works speak to each other and what they imply as a whole.
James Gui is a photographer and undergraduate at Harvard College studying Computer Science. His most recent photographic work, exhibited at the 2019 Harvard Student Art Show and Light Leaked, explores the relationship of Asian American identity to vernacular American spaces and constructed environments.
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This exhibit was curated and prepared by BAAA Gallery. Graphic works are done by BAAA BOOKS, the gallery’s in-house design studio founded to serve artists with photo/video documentation, poster, catalog, book, and exhibition design.
