Timeless TIme

An art installation of Italian furniture
September 9 to September 26, 2010 at Three on the Bund, Shanghai


In Timeless Time, Form and Spirit in Italian Furniture, Tim was invited by FederlingoArredo, the Italian Wood and Furniture Association, to create an art installation of Italian furniture.

The maturity of both technique and tactile impressions in Italy has achieved a perfect harmony in terms of art and technology, influencing trends across the world and leading the pursuit of taste and quality. How does China respond to this call?

In the Chinese landscape tradition form emerges from the interior state of the painter, and this form reveals its mystical charm. A group of mountains created at the hand of the artist refers to the mountains of reality, but even more important is the figure of the mountain within the soul of the artist. This produces a correspondence of affect in China’s art and even craft. Including the shaping of furniture, its lines its materials, its changes and its color–all of this ceaselessly seeks its own interest.

In Timeless Time, the scene is split into nine separate sections, producing nine types of connected but asymmetrical landscapes that reveal the total initial scene layer by layer. Nine pieces of furniture are specially selected to act as a backbone of this whole, creating nine cultural dialogues through independent imagery projected across the installation, constituting a continually cycling narrative structure. Emphasis lies on the concept of a journey through the mountains, but these mountains exist neither in the real world nor in the imagination; they balance in the artificial world between existence and non-existence.