Deploying the aesthetics of apocalyptic and disaster movies, Kara Chin’s new installation situates the viewer somewhere between the cinema screen and audience, caught in the light of the projector beam. Each element contributes to a state of unease, corresponding to the pervasive anxiety felt in contemporary life in the face of existential threat.
Concerned Dogs builds an immersive environment that is both shrine and cinema. Miniature cinema seats transform the viewer into a colossal protagonist, like a Godzilla exploring relics of the past. Hidden within dioramas are commonplace symbols of the present – discarded vapes, chewing gum, Pringles tubes and soda cans – scattered amongst the rubble and vegetation of a future post-apocalyptic landscape, juxtaposed with ancient roman artifacts that appear on screen. A badly rendered figure of Tom Cruise flees disaster movie tropes. Animated by a downloaded ‘disaster movie’ pack, he acts out a loop of chaotic actions whilst holding a lituus; an ancient Roman wand used by Augurs who foretold the future from the behaviour of birds.
The work springs from Chin’s ongoing interest in mythologies proliferated by cinema, which bypass conscious thought and provide a subliminal framework of how to act. Concerned dogs, birds flying away, trembling food items, and wide eyes in rear view mirrors, all foreshadow calamity. Chin was recently bereaved, and the project has sprung from the anxiety of grief, but moves through this to proffer the idea that in rehearsing the end of the world, we can hopefully cathartically move out of an unnamed existential paralysis. The detritus around the cinema seats become decorative patterns, and there is humour here, such as in Cruise’s ridiculous facial expression and the fear provoked by innocuous ripples in a glass of water.
BIOGRAPHY
Chin (b. 1994) has exhibited internationally at galleries and museums including: Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK; The 8th International Triennial of Art and Ecology, Maribor, SI; BALTIC39, Newcastle, UK; South London Gallery, London, UK; ADM Gallery, Singapore; DKUK, London, UK; Gallery North, Newcastle, UK; Hatch, Paris, FR; CBS Gallery, Liverpool, UK; Tuesday to Friday, Valencia, ES; Science Museum, London, UK; APT Gallery, London, UK; Fieldworks, London, UK; Quench, Margate, UK; VITRINE, London, UK; VITRINE, Basel, UK; VITRINE, Digital; The Embassy Tea Gallery, London, UK; Subsidiary Projects, London, UK; Pineapple Black, Middlesbrough, UK; The Milton Gallery, London, UK; UCL Art Museum, London, UK; San Mei Gallery, London, UK; IMT Gallery, London, UK; Fold, London, UK; The Pallent House Gallery, London, UK; Off Site Project, Online; Huxley Parlour, London, UK.
Current exhibitions include the artist’s first exhibition in China ‘Splendour of the Sun’ at Galerie du Monde in Hong Kong (25 Feb 2023).
