Antenna Space is pleased to announce our participation in Art Basel Miami Beach 2022 with artists Han Bing, Nancy Lupo and Zhou Siwei in the “Nova Sector”, booth N01.

After the permacrisis over the past two years, artists Han Bing, Nancy Lupo and Zhou Siwei have examined and reflected on the construction of individual bodies, spirits and minds in different dimensions, attempting to find a moment of peace and steadiness.

Unlike her previous works that expose the overlapping posters on walls and in the corners the city, Han Bing’s latest works reference Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and objects that she photographs and observes over a long period of time, from varying angles, in different light, under different circumstances. Memories and visual experiences overlapping in a stream-of-consciousness, the past and future pile up and intertwine, exposing the flashy superficialities, baring hidden truths without a trace. In her work Han Bing deconstructs pictorial reality, opening it up to new dimensions, gradually moving it towards abstraction, thereby reshaping the boundaries of color and line from a visual perspective, freeze-framing transient moments to capture a sense of eternity and control.

Nancy Lupo’s work involving kimono bows, bronze door handles and gold pigment extends from an era when she was marooned in Tbilisi, Georgia amid Covid-19 lockdowns and existing in between time zones half the world apart. Entitled, Leading Up To An Entrance Somewhere (2022), the work developed slowly and was meant to tether her drift. Lupo has described the period of time as categorized by the contradictory notion of dusty liquidity and intuitively picked out things from her periphery which were likewise solidly misplaced and gleaming.

The undulations in Untitled (2022) result from Lupo’s first attempt at making molds from her series of paper Tellers, which initially had many points of reference including a children’s fortune telling game. In this iteration, the distortions are not only the result of the weight of paper and glue collapsing onto themselves, but of a silicone mold with no “mother”, or rigid support to hold it into form.

The Burger King crown entered Lupo’s alphabet in the same era as Leading Up To An Entrance Somewhere (2022). Initially, Lupo was reminded of it by the ornate scrollwork that was evident in the balconies in Georgia and the Caucasus region where Lupo was locked down. As she continues to explore the potentials of this form as a carrier of meaning, Lupo cites its resemblance to a film strip and also these kinds of stacked rock spiral labyrinths that Lupo frequently encountered growing up in Arizona.

In the most elaborate work to date involving the BK crown, Portrait of Teal Swan (2022) Lupo considers the contemporary spiritual leader and influencer who is also frequently described as a cult leader. Nancy Lupo’s sustained curiosity is directed towards Swan’s particular aesthetics, which embrace a kind of darkness. This mood aligns with her methodology, which is underlined by an origin story involving aspects from an era known as the “Satanic Panic”. For Lupo, the glass beads further blur Swan’s image and function as a meditative medium similar to walking or driving.

The pattern of Tattoo (Dream, Dragon) (2022) comes from a tattoo on the character Chan Ho Nam from the Hong Kong movie Young and Dangerous. Zhou Siwei uses a layered painting method to imitate the pale, sickly skin after washing off the tattoo. In order not to let the faintly discernible dragon tattoo cause discomfort, Zhou uses the character for the charming word “dream” on the skin to divert attention. The skin, pattern and text form a blurred story based on a timeline, simultaneously portraying a purely fictional portrait, without form, merely leaving behind a myth.

The two works related to Apple Inc. by Zhou Siwei fictionalize the image of a teenager squatting next to a woven bamboo basket filled with apples that he is selling, instead wasting time on his phone (possibly an iPhone). This utterly fabricated character reminds Zhou of news about a Foxconn factory, where when they failed to recruit workers, the wind blew, carrying a strong 5G signal. It is Zhou’s humor that keeps a subtle story without placing it into a larger narrative, leaving lots of room for interpretation – as images, symbols, and narratives are blended together, everyone gets their own own signal of understanding.