Chen Xiaoyun's 'Faint' at MC: Narrative and Symbol in Video and Photography

Chen Xiaoyun's first US solo show, 'Faint' (2006-07), at MC in Los Angeles, presents video and photographic works that explore how meaning is derived from narrative. The four-channel video projection 'Several Moments Extending to the Night II' (2004) uses three temporary walls to create an arc, enhancing the displaced nature of images, with a constant train sound that becomes the show's soundtrack. In a smaller gallery, 'Lash' (2004) features whip sounds as a metronome for still images and found footage, reminiscent of Bruce Nauman's 'Stamping in the Studio'. Two photographs, 'Revolution' (2005) and 'InBetween' (2006), frame the entry between galleries, depicting an arm with an axe rising from water and whimsical characters turning away from a metropolis. Xiaoyun creates a personal language of symbols—snakes, water, branches, fireworks, flags, ponies—that he later diminishes into arbitrary signs, conflating narrative and symbol to make cultural meaning absurd. His work navigates between structuralist and post-structuralist critique, positing a post-colonial commentary by implicating the viewer's desire for narrative resolution and territorial claim. The artist mines the personal without nostalgia, rewriting inherited pursuits of achievement and emptying them of extravagance.