OOCH
Is a collaborative project between Ophelia S. Chan and Oliver Haidutschek.
Ophelia S. Chan also works under the name William Lee, and Oliver Haidutschek was previously known as Aoto Oouchi.
A1 → A2
stainless steel, glass mosaic, aluminium composite panel
440x102x131
2017
A1 → A2 consists of a stainless steel structure that sits on top of a bed of glass mosaics, which resembles the railings of a swimming pool that is half submerged in water.
The connotation of going in and out of water signifies the in-between state of transformation - a shift of inhabitance and a shift between man and object.
Commissioned by C-Space Beijing (2008-2019), photos taken at Oyster - a duo exhibition of Ophelia S. Chan and Oliver Haidutschek.
Astonishing Creatures
steel, stainless steel, LCD screens
160x80x80cm
2016
This video installation presents three camera angles that simultaneously construct the ontology of a falling object.
The White Lodge
steel, stainless steel, pigment print on PVC
200x70x120cm
2016
Images of corporal punishment are censored by abstracted objects and further obscured with the layering of images, while it creates a sense of volume from a distance, as we move closer each layer becomes clearer as an individual image, and the masked tools are thus unveiled in between the layers with our movement.
OOCH x Intelligentsia Gallery
Between 2014 and 2017, we worked both as individual artists and a collective with Intelligentsia Gallery - a project by WAI Think Tank in creating numerous art exhibitions around China and Europe.
Aoto Oouchi explores different phenomena that occur in and through social media, both in the sense of the language production of images and in their consumption. Through repetition and duplication, Aoto Oouchi aims at rethinking the ways in which objects are shaped ontologically, how certain types of aesthetic languages and objects become fetishes that define social groups within pop culture, or how value-driven systems as likes and reblogs create a specific setting for the work.
Just as the actual depiction of objects in real life hold a different value than when shared in the internet as a 3d sculpture, Aoto Oouchi likes to use these schemes to create 3d object installations and watch their symbolic value shift and reshape by reseeding it back to the social media.
Aoto Oouchi x Panther Gallery
Aoto Oouchi x Hotel Art Pavilion
The notion of gender is constructed through the performance of significant social acts that resonate with the representation and realisation of the self, as well as the adoption of foreign modes of being through mimicry, simulacra and costuming. Transvestism is a performance of gender that is not restrictedly associated with sexuality, but rather, a kind of eroticism achieved within an exterior’s limits, and a means of self-realisation that initiates an epistemological shift that defines and erases the fundamental dichotomy that separates the self and the other.
William Lee is an ongoing project in which the performaitivity of gender is explored through the examination of the posture, as well as the gestural and facial expressions of transgender characters and cross-gender performances in the history of cinema, as well as in the cross-dressing community.
What started as an online project that utilised various social media platforms as a source and an outlet for research, turned into an art project that took inspiration from the audio-visual materials collected and integrated them into physical settings.
[Watch all William Lee videos | Visit Ophelia S. Chan artist website]
Beijing, China.
Düsseldorf, Germany.