Rui Lin | HOT SWEET TOFU
Oct 30, 2015 – Nov 15, 2015
Noon – 6p, Wed – Sun
Opening Reception
Oct 30, 2015 Friday, 7p-10p
SLEEP CENTER | 9 Monroe Street BASEMENT, New York, 10002
SLEEP CENTER is delighted to presents its own member Rui Lin’s new project HOT SWEET TOFU.
A good piece of soft tofu is a perfect white block with sharp 90-degree angels.
At July 21st, 2015, I decide to turn an abandoned basement space underneath a temple in New York’s Chinatown residential area into an art studio/space. The basement was burned twice, a dance/social club at one point (still known by our neighbors as Beijing Club), a shelter for illegal immigrates, and a gambling joint. The following month and a half, alongside with my partner, Kerim Zapsu, a little by little we transformed the space into what you see now as SLEEP CENTER.
Look back at the process, I found no evidence of actual planning or standard guide that we’ve followed, while the goal is to build a standard platform/template for creative use. I was possessed into a state of discipline, in order to make the best out of what we’ve had. There was a need of extreme self-control as momentum, as a result there comes self-hypnotize – I split myself into two, putting one side to sleep and another to build.
How important and effective is to have a template? It made me consciously compressed a part of my own consciousness! Is the acceptance of trade off between cause and result finally soak into all our thinking process now, at the eve before burning light (as tale tells, either comes with A.I. or god with human image) washes over this land of sheep and zombies, after many clogged struggles, debates, disappointments, enlightenment, road trip, drugs, saints and Satan, we can have a grip to “how to” in general and ask less about the question “why me”? What is the relationship between our own conscious to the existed world (all the collective knowledge that is known, documented, and mapped out) and the unknown (it is not to be forgotten there is tomorrow)?
In this project that expands over half a month, Rui Lin will exhibit and transform the front gallery space of SLEEP CENTER as an installation, the installation will evolve everyday in the discourse about the past, present, future and alternative twist of “maker of template, soft discipline”.
Rui Lin
(B. Guangzhou,China) is an artist who currently lives and works in New York City.
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SLEEP CENTER, located on the harmonious Monroe Street of Chinatown, New York, is a safe house/experimental lab for art and ideas that provides local communities and international audiences with a forum for cultural dialogue.
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