by Chris Dercon

In an era of the cool, of the newest, as well as the most sophisticated media techniques, artists worldwise, go consciously back to much older media techniques as well as much “slower” images, such as hand-painted animation films. Think of the critical, as well as popular success of visual artists such as William Kentridge or filmmakers like Bela Tarr. Both show and tell, – in the form of barely coloured, black and white, expressionistic long, epic narratives, – the recent histories, full of conflict and tension of their regions, respectively South Africa and Eatsern Europe. And in the midst of the rapid development of digital, illusionary 3-D techniques, “Stoneage Animation”, such as stop-motion techniques, find their way back to artist’s studios and film theaters like in an optical resistance movement. Such is also the case of the work of young Sun Xun, who graduated from the Printmaking Department of the China Academy of Arts, and who, in his drawings and animation films, is working a new model of “mixing up the water”. Also his work is a kind of “resistance”, resisting the age of New Media through the rewriting of a craft-like practice that seemed lost forever in an environment of individualized, interactive computer programs which can only simulate democracy. Sun Xun and his colleagues want by contrast to reinvent the cinema as a mass culture. Indeed,  Sun Xun’s animations would be more similar to a flicker book, to the earliest cinema projections. The „movies“ of Sun Xun, whose work got shown in recent years in film festivals world wide, bear titles such as “Heroes no longer” or “Coal Spell”, reinventing a long – lost? – epic tradition in film, from Sergej Eisenstein over Chris Marker and Wang Bing or Jia Zhangke. But of course one might also think of the painters Liu Xiaodong and Qiu Anxiong, who are working within the idiom of cinema as well. Just like them, Sun Xun opens, through collaging both real and fictional documents, layers of memory as a means against erasure and forgettfulness. The “arrested” character of his eclectic, seemingly primitive or traditional images and sounds help to shape our own opinion, when it comes to the contradictions and imperfections of the recent political and social histories of China. His ouevre, although still young, functions as a theatre of memory in which he poses the question: Which history of China one wants to remember and to be part of?

1980 Born in Fuxin, Liaoning Province, currently lives and works in Beijing, China

2005 Graduated from Print-making Department of China Academy of Fine Arts 

Solo Exhibitions

2008              After Doctrine, Yokohama Creativecity Center, Yokohama, Japan

2009                 Sun Xun Solo Exhibition, ZIAM Gallery, Yokohama, Japan

                           Animals-Sun Xun solo exhibition, Max Pretetch Gallery, New York, USA.

                           Sun Xun: The Dark Magician of New Chinese Animation-Pacific film archive Theater, California University of Berkeley, USA

People’s Republic of Zoo, Colchester, University of Essex Gallery, UK.

          Sun Xun: Shock of Time, The Drawing Center, NY, USA

Group Exhibitions

2010           Looking through Film: Traces of Cinema and Self-Constructs in Contemporary Art, OCT Contemporary

                     Art Terminal Of He Xiangning Art Museum, Shen Zhen

                    Jungle – A Close-up Focus on Chinese Contemporary Art Trends, Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing

2009         13th Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre, Hong Kong

2009         International Festival for Arts and Media Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan.

                    Impark Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands

                   Double Happiness, Leonhardi Kulturprojekte, Frankfurt, Germany