A glimpse of Sun Xun's project "Reconstruction of the Universe".

For the second Audemars Piguet Art Commission which premiered during Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2016, the artist Sun Xun, introduced to Audemars Piguet by guest curator Ruijun Shen, created Reconstruction of the Universe, an immersive artwork exploring global systems and individual memory. It consists of animated video works projected on flat and spherical surfaces and a series of woodblock prints presented under a large-scale, undulating bamboo pavilion. At the heart of the installation is Sun Xun’s 3-D stop-animation work Time Spy—a poetic meditation on time, cosmology and personal history.

The ten-minute video work features hybrid animal-human creatures, curious motorised mechanisms and dreamy landscapes.

The immersive artwork explores global systems and individual memory.

The artist asks the question, he doesn’t give the answers.

SUN XUN

Portrait of Sun Xun.

Beijing-based Chinese artist Sun Xun (b. 1980) is a multimedia artist whose dreamlike, expressionistic work blends ancient and cutting-edge artistic techniques. After studying printmaking at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, he founded Pi Animation Studio in 2006 to pursue his interest in moving images. Whether he is using traditional Chinese ink, charcoal, erasure, shadow puppets, woodblock, animation, or some combination thereof, his practice explores themes of history, memory, perception and metaphysics in narratives that involve recurring symbols, animals and geometric motifs.

 

Sun Xun’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions around the world, notably at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hayward Gallery, London; Drawing Center, New York; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel and Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai. In 2010, he was awarded the Best Young Artists award by the CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award, the Young Art Award by Taiwan Contemporary Art Link and the Arts Fellowship by Citivella Ranieri Foundation. His films have been screened at numerous festivals worldwide, including the 25th Torino Film Festival; the 8th Seoul International Film Festival; the 53rd International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen and the MECAL International Short Film Festival, Barcelona. He is represented by Sean Kelly, New York; Edouard Malingue, Hong Kong and ShanghART, Shanghai.