Yulin Gu & Sha Luo: Seal the Fog

Opening Reception: June 16, 2023, 6 - 9 PM. Contact the gallery for exact address.

Tutu Gallery presents a two-person exhibition of Yulin Gu and Sha Luo, Seal the Fog, opening June 16 through August 1, 2023. Incorporating photographic objects, sculptures, and site-specific installations, Yulin and Sha revise and reinterpret daily terrains and household items they encounter, gently playing with the reliability of memories and the originality of creative acts. Mass-produced materials such as plastic, fabric, and glass become agencies for translating marginalized experiences and personal narratives into tactile forms. With works detached from the walls, suspended from the ceilings, and standing in the backyard, the exhibition attempts to turn Tutu’s home space into an imaginary field where displaced nostalgia resides.

Yulin Gu takes low-cost plastic domestic supplies as a primary medium in her practice. The flexibility of this material adapts to physical change, endures collective memory, and can even resemble urban landscapes: the spinning sculptures may find their similarity with cloth hangers blown by breeze or swings in playgrounds. By reassembling and attaching her creative care to these disposable objects, Yulin seeks a tenderness free from the conventional value system and a dreamlike way to narrate the experience of migration.

Sha Luo’s image-making process revolves around the interplay of fading memories and photographs as a means of documentation. In her Uncle series, Sha layers photos found in her family’s old camera with those she took in recent years. The compositionally alike sceneries intertwine the observations of different surroundings and bring ambiguous connections between her family members. Photographs featured in the exhibition are attached to magnets, framed with glass, or transferred onto metal surfaces; through her experiments with various materials, Sha explores how possibly false interpretations reshape seemingly real visual recollections while evoking a subtle sensory experience inviting of touch.

• Yindi Chen