! Attention: Because we are moving to our new gallery-space, the exhibition will end on Wednesday 22 November 2006 !!

Weng Peijun (Weng Fen) "Time is Money"

"There's no such dangerous task as piling up eggs." This Chinese proverb becomes self-evident in Weng Peijun's (*1961) installation works. In his "Time Is Money" display, spectators look out over the "Accumulating Eggs Project" (2005) from a raised platform. It is several layers of eggs from hens, ducks, ostriches and other birds, carefully piled up to form the exact visual and graphic design of a 50 yuan note.

When the spectators are back on the floor and thus at the same level with the installation, they have a wide view on a moving skyline: on a free-standing platform of 400 x 800 cm, the artist creates a complex urban structure, a maze of streets, apartment blocks, office buildings and representative towers. This three-dimensional city made of 66,000 blown-out eggs grows in the context of globalization which during the last few decades has fundamentally changed China's social reality - and with it, the living conditions of the Chinese population. The country is right in the middle of a process of dramatic transformation, where traditional values and time-honored behavioral patterns are being downright reversed. Modernization, economic growth and urbanization are typical catchwords to characterize the current situation in the country.

The Chinese saying quoted above inspired Weng Peijun to use eggs of varying size and color as the raw material for his installations. The egg in its fragility is permanently exposed to the danger of destruction but at the same time it carries and protects new life. Because it is oval, an egg seems to be the most unlikely object for shaping buildings, which are defined not least by straight lines and sharply defined corners. Inventive and innovative concepts, both in design and in the formal realization of their constructions, are also supplied by the architects from China and abroad who are giving a new face to Chinese cities. In his pieces "CCTV" and "Bird's Nest", Weng Peijun makes reference to the new headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) by Rem Koohlhaas and the Beijing Olympic Stadium, designed by Herzog & de Meuron in cooperation with Ai Weiwei - both buildings still under construction in the city but attract international attention even now because of their visionary concepts and enormous dimensions. However, piling up eggs endlessly is not without risk: the situation can easily get out of hand and the buildings would all crash and crumble. In installation art, Weng Peijun reflects on the frenzied building boom in China but also the interest for new concepts, materials and shapes. The architectural patterns - new structures coming up, old ones vanishing or being superimposed by new layers - are symptomatic examples of what is reality in all walks of life of today's China.

"Time is Money", this slogan is shown in huge Chinese characters as well as in English translation on the rear wall of the exhibition room: economic growth and monetary affluence as both the main driving forces and the objective of a society that until a few years ago was largely closed off from the world, leading a very simple and traditional way of life. This development sometimes produces the strangest fancies, assigning to a part of the Chinese population - e.g., to the protagonists of Weng Peijun's photographic series "Bird's Eye View " (2001-2005) - merely the role of astonished but largely uninvolved bystanders. The locations he chooses for his photographs are rooftops of high-rises, usually standing around the periphery of urban agglomerations. The two girls in school uniform have a vast panorama of the city in front of them. No matter if the metropolis in question is Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen or Shanghai, the urban landscapes are all alike in their labyrinth of office towers and construction cranes wiping out the old structures which had evolved over centuries. Although the two young Chinese are standing with the back to the viewer, they let us take part in their look into the future. Irrespective of the art medium, a central issue in Weng Peijun's creativity is the relationship of the individual to the environment. His photographs always evoke a sense of pausing: the course of things seems arrested for a brief moment, which allows individual reflection.

Karin Seiz, Lucerne, 6.10.2006