Acclaimed cross-media artist Jennifer Wen Ma’s large-scale installation titled “A Landscape of Metamorphosis: No End to End” is currently on display at MGM COTAI’s The Spectacle.
The installation marks the second partnership between MGM and Wen since “Art Macao” in 2019 and is the latest addition to the MGM Chairman’s Collection.
During a recent media tour of the installation, Wen described her work to reporters as being “like a three-dimensional landscape painting” and “traditional scroll that you can open” that the audience can enter and walk around.
Moreover, an MGM statement noted that Wen’s honeycomb-structured paper sculptures utilise laser-cutting techniques to mimic ancient Chinese accordion folds to create “an immersive, handscroll-like painting”.
The statement added that the work is “an ever-altering 3D Shan Shui installation” that takes inspiration from “traditional art forms, philosophies, aesthetic theories, and practices, such as Literati landscape painting, classical garden design, and the Book of Rites”.
The statement said that “change” is the art piece’s core message. It also incorporates the Five Elements mentioned in the Book of Rites that describe the rotation of seasons, with Wen depicting the theme with two sets of paper sculptures: “Spring and Summer”, which symbolises “fresh revival of liveliness with hints of tender greens, pinks and reds”, while the “Autumn and Winter” set “coats the atrium with darker hues with sparkles of silver to mimic the calm, snowy hills during the chilly days”, the statement pointed out.
Designing two rotations, Wen said, was also to done to create something new for the audience, adding that the space is “very dynamic” during the day with the sunlight compared to during night time, which has “very dramatic lighting”. With two different scenes, Wen said that the installation “should be experienced at different times of the day and different times of the season”
The statement added that the sculptural garden in the form of three islands is inspired by Macau’s geographic composition and has been made to be “a site-specific work that integrates seamlessly into the public space of the Spectacle”. Next to the islands are what Wen referred to as “digital ponds”. Both the islands and the ponds have LED panels as their bases, which the statement said reflects “coloured beams that change along the dynamics of nature”.
There are also three “abstract butterflies” that “soar out of the landscape into the sky”, Wen pointed out, which is the installation’s metamorphosis component. The butterfly shapes, according to the statement, are inspired by Rorschach* image-making and the shape of three Chinese characters: “nothingness” (無), “exhaustive”(窮) and “limit” (盡). The creatures represent the “never-ending source of metamorphic content and inspirations”, reflecting the continuous innovation of Chinese culture.
*The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analysed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both.
This undated handout photo recently provided by MGM shows acclaimed cross-media artist Jennifer Wen Ma working on the large-scale installation titled “A Landscape of Metamorphosis: No End to End”.
Photos: Rui Pastorin
