Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge

Overview

In his eight-screen installation at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Yang Fudong stretches time, making 11 minutes seem like nearly an hour and a half.

The eight screens are concavely arranged so that when sitting amidst them you feel as if you're surrounded by Fudong's delicate black-and-white imagery. What unfolds before you is intriguing — the setting is the West Lake in early spring; there are four men in traditional Chinese attire; four men in Western suits and four women, sometimes in suits, dressed as men, most of the time in exquisite cheongsams and luxurious fur stoles. These characters move silently from screen to screen as they traverse the banks of the lake and the lake itself. To your right, the camera focuses on the rippling water or the sway of a tree budding with the season's first flowers, while to your left four men stalk through the woods and somewhere near the middle the four girls run down the cobblestone bridge, tickling each other and laughing.

Fudong says of the characters in his 2006 video work, "as winter fades from them, they yearn to catch one last vestige of the Broken Bridge: the memory of translucent, languid snow". They infuse the work with feelings of both celebration and nostalgia.

Image: Yang Fudong, No Snow on the Broken Bridge, 2006.