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CAI LEI  蔡磊

Échelle des Plans

12.10, 2016 - 2.28, 2017

Beijing

Installation Views
Press

“Échelle des plans” is a film term, which literally translates to “the scale of the images.” In film, shots are usually divided into long shots, full shots, medium shots, and close-ups. Through these conscious divisions, the film takes on its own visual space, psychological space, and narrative traits.

 

Beginning with the language of relief sculpture, Cai Lei gradually locked onto the relationship between space and visual misconceptions, while also experimenting with different materials and environments. However, in this exhibition, Cai Lei is no longer limited to materials and experiences from his personal life; he turns his current working method onto public life and collective experience in the broader sense. Also in this exhibition, Cai Lei takes the visual dislocations of space that wereoriginally compressed into single works and expands them into an entire exhibition, transforming representational misconceptions into spatial experiences.

 

Cai uses sloping walls to create irregularities, he uses light and mirrors to divide spaces, he uses grass to create seasonal dislocations, and he uses fast-moving manmade “sunlight” to create unusual experiences of time… These experiments are like film or theater sets; he“re-edits” experiences in

different scenes and times within the exhibition space. In this context, titling the exhibition “Échelle des Plans” after the film term seemed appropriate.

Wandering161203

Wandering161203

The remaining

The remaining

Give me a space-between

Give me a space-between

Naked 161127

Naked 161127

Works
Artist

CAI LEI

 

b.1983  Changchun, Jilin Province, China

 

Cai Lei’s works explore the relationship between illusion and space. From his interest in planarity, he carves out an illusory conceptual space which oscillates between the second and third dimension for his creations. Working in both painting and mixed media sculptural relief, light plays an important factor in enhancing this illusion of depth. Painted spaces of interior hallways or corners simultaneously protrude and recede depending on the viewer’s experience of the work.  

 

Cai Lei was born in 1983 and graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sculpture at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. An award winning young artist from the ‘80s generation, he has exhibited internationally including the Yangtze Art Museum (Chongqing), Foundation Taylor (Paris), CAFA Museum (Beijing), Poly Art Museum (Beijing), Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Today Art Museum (Beijing), and Museum of Contemporary Art Bonn (Germany). 

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