Nothing Holds on Its Own

Doors open today, 30th October, to this striking interrogation into human interconnectedness through primarily sculpture. The show points out: objects that scatter around people inevitably tell their story. The curators Moyu Yang and Chang Wang elucidate as follows the exhibition “explores love as a relational logic of existence — an understanding that no life stands isolated.” Artfully, this group show is material proof of the exhibition concept since it includes over thirty artists in conversation. Togetherness is a triumph. Far from cluttered, the minimalistic and neutral-toned works are spaciously positioned and scintillate with intention, each touching on connection.

Marguerite Duras’s writing in La Vie matérielle includes her observation, “nothing exists in isolation; objects, memories, and feelings intertwine to form the web of our existence.” This idea Green Grammar reached for is put on display throughout, making visible theory with art. Tonight, Kairi Tokoro, the Japanese artist based in London will perform with his object-sculpture in the gallery, bringing people together. His work follows this thread: materiality in space. He enlivens, with sound and performance, his sculpture constructed of natural, forgotten and found objects. Expect an investigation of “subtle shifts in temporality through form, motion, and sound — inviting reflection on the presence and absence of 間 (Ma).” Unifying the negative-space-like concept of Ma and material debris of life he underlines again the importance of holding: objects by space, ourselves by each other. No one thing or concept is in isolation.

Sentimentality is no weakness. The artists at Nothing Holds on Its Own prove the exhibition statement, “To exist is to be entangled, and love, in this sense, becomes the ongoing weaving of becoming-with.” Described earlier, an outstanding piece is Shuhang Luo’s No One Can Be Closer Than Us (Chapters 1 & 3), which unifies installation with photography. The curatorial duo describe Luo’s work to interrogate “the generative mechanisms and boundaries of perceptual experience.” The work puts a block on drawing quick easy conclusions and invites speculation. “Through calm, distilled observation, his works enter the peripheries of reality, exploring how perception, distance, and intimacy intertwine.” No One Can Be Closer Than Us (Chapters 1 & 3) puts on display presence and absence. Logic is subverted, there’s a conversation happening with no people present as well as a precarious chair with almost no seat that might not be useable and disruptive ruler completed by fragmented images of hands tacked on. Reaching, but not touching, measuring but inaccurately or with a non-numeric conclusion.

“The show reveals how connection and sustenance happen only between beings and things” add the curators. Physicality and connection is key. Disturbing wigs or scalps are scattered on a carpet by Georgia Salmond, whilst Amelia Akiko Frank nails graphite illustrations on wooden planks with magnetic metal filings that look like banana skins at their feet for Boundless Flesh. Frank “considers how bone and skin, structure and motion, hold one another in tension.” Contradiction is present, in so far that the curators nod to Jungian thought that they phrase as “the integration of opposites, where vulnerability and strength coexist as necessary tensions within the psyche.” Fixity and change, structure and motion, are some of the many interests of the artists at play, along with distinctly Japanese aesthetics. A show worth a visit.