Su-Mei Tse: Echoes of a Waking Dream

Su-Mei Tse, born in Luxembourg in 1973 to a Chinese father and English mother, studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. In 2009, she won the Prix international d'art contemporain from the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, which hosted an exhibition from October 15 to November 15. Her first solo show in Paris opened at Galerie Serge Le Borgne from October 22 to December 19, and a presentation of recent works ran at Peter Blum Gallery in New York from November 19. Her work, spanning video, photography, and sculpture, explores philosophical questions through a haiku-like simplicity, often referencing her dual heritage and musical training. Key pieces include "The Ich-Manifestation," a video of tortoises on five screens with slow motion and sound, analyzed by Jens Hauser as a collective manifestation for individuality; "Personal Times," hourglasses calibrated to human pulses; and "Son pour insomniaques," portraits and purring recordings of cats. Other works like "Dong Xi Nan Bei" address cultural otherness, while "Open Score" features Tse playing squash-tennis with an absent partner. Her practice frequently incorporates game motifs, such as in a 2006 homage to Yasunari Kawabata's "The Master of Go," using four photographs of go stones. Installations like "Chambre sourde" (2003) create anechoic spaces, and "Many Spoken Words" is a fountain with black ink. Tse lives and works between Luxembourg, Paris, and Berlin.