Artist | Yi Xin Tong video works overview

Yi Xin Tong was born in Lushan, China in 1988. He received a Bachelor of honor from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (2012) following two years of study at China University of Geosciences, Beijing from 2005 to 2007. In 2014, he finished his study from the Department of Studio Art at New York University and received his MFA degree. He has won the award of the first Prix de la Fondation Choi pour l’art contemporain. Tong now lives and works in New York. His recent solo projects include: “World River Atlas”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2020); “The Attraction Show—Origin of Ripples”, Snarte Space, Nanchang, China (2019); “Going Outside”, Nanhai Art, Millbrae, California, USA (2018). He also attended the following group exhibitions: “Boomerang – OCAT Biennale 2021”, OCT Art &Design Gallery, Shenzhen, China (2021); “Liquid Ground”, Para Site, Hong Kong, China (2021); “Durational”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2021); “Being in the Void”, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China (2021); “From Checkers to Complex Systems”, Times Art Museum, Chengdu, China (2021); “Meditations in an Emergency”, UCCA, Beijing, China (2020) “BRIC Biennial III”, BRIC House, Brooklyn, USA (2019); “Guangzhou Airport Biennale”, Guangzhou, China (2019); “Disaster of Extra Epic Proportions”, curated by Alvin Li, chi K11 art museum, Shanghai, China (2019); “Long March Project: The Deficit Faction”, Long March Space, Beijing, China (2019); “Adrift”, Chambers Fine Art, New York, USA (2019); “Long Day”, Aranya Art Centre, Qinhuangdao, China (2019); “To Speculate, Of Nature”, NanHai Art, Millbrae, USA (2019); “Shadow as a Stain”, ACRE, Chicago, USA (2018); “Yanping Art Harvest in the Village”, Jiulong Village, China (2018); “Practice: in Progress”, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, USA (2018); “Life and Revolution, Landscape of Huangshan and Lushan”, Taikang Space Beijing China (2018).

Tong’s art practice is located in the compromising crossroad of social culture and wild nature. Those boundaries are mostly burry, desolate and dismal. At the same time, those reflect the surviving situation among people and other species. Art critics Brett Yates said that Tong follows “post-apocalyptic aesthetic, where man and beast meet at the edges of a crumbling civilization, reflected in artworks which ‘are about survival’”. The famous art critics Barbara Pollack have mentioned that Tong records a “bizarre evolution” which “capturing the true surrealism”.

Combining with music and poetry, this series of night vision videos is a reflection on the outdoors, urban wildlife, non-artificial intelligence, language, dark nights, the cosmos, and mad emotions. 

In this travelogue-cum-video essay, artist and fisherman Yi Xin Tong travels to Dinawan Island in Malaysia, a popular tourist destination, where his encounter with a fish locally referred to as Julung-julung leads to a series of investigations and his eventual crafting and gifting of a lucky charm to the island. The phonetic resemblance between the fish — a major source of nutrition for the local fishermen — and jiaolong, an aquatic dragon in Chinese mythology, becomes the departure point from which Tong ruminates on the changing ecology and spirit world of Southeast Asia.

Yi Xin Tong’s interest in non-human beings and site-specificity renews in his latest work Poems in the Mount Lu Zoo. The series of ten poetry videos revolves around the history of decline and transformation of a zoo in his hometown Mount Lu. The ten videos concern individual species and pavilions. The narratives render an allegorical texture, while the moving images can also be regarded as footnotes to the poems.

Yi Xin Tong create objects, moving images, and sound to discover human culture’s dynamic relationship with nature at a geological scale. His work explores the polymorphic quality of both living and non-living beings, and with a wry sense of humor, instigates noise for societal beliefs in value, decency, and rationality. The creation of Yi Xin Tong is like a modern wanderer, wandering in the city, collecting pieces of daily life and converting to poetry. 

Origin of Ripples – Yukon Chapter is a filmic study of the serene poetics of ecology. The video is comprised of footage shot on five different devices (action camera, spy camera, DSLR camera, cellphone camera, black-and-white Super 8 film) near Dawson City, Yukon, the center of the Klondike Gold Rush from 1896 to 1899. The work investigates how ripples, abstract patterns of effect and trace, interconnect the unique natural environment of northern Canada, the madness of the gold rush, and the astounding profusion of dredge tailings and ponds. Through close observation and corporeal experiences and with the poise of a natural scientist and the vision of an artist, Tong’s work examines the polymorphic nature of beings, both living and non-living.

Tong's another interest lies in fishing. He has been to various urban peripheries where he encountered ruins, wild animals and vegetation, shamans, and many other things beyond mundane life.

Accompanied by quasi-relaxing tunes, through ingenious juxtaposition and conflict of the visual and the voiceover, this seemingly cheerful fishing video ridicules image making itself, ridicules scientific research achievements in fish studies, ridicules proud accounts of past fishing experience without exception, and ridicules the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.