Serpentine Sahasrara

(cyanotype paper, sunlight, water, 10cm x 10.5cm, Yueni Zhong, 2010)

Shadow of the Philosopher King's Exit

(cyantope paper, broken chain, sunlight, water, 7 cm x 7 cm, Yueni Zhong, 2010)

Vampire

(cyanotype paper, SPF 110 sunscreen, sunlight, water, 7cm x 7cm, Yueni Zhong, 2010)

Persepolis Yin Yang

(cyanotyope paper, sunscreen, sunlight, water, Yueni Zhong, 2010)
Yin: 59 cm x 90 cm, Yang: 55.5 cm x 90 cm

Opening - "The Sun Won't Leave Me Alone"

Yueni Zhong's "The Sun Won't Leave Me Alone" opened today. Crowds were pleased with the timeliness -- introducing sun and shadow to the gallery on the day of the summer solstice -- as well as by the loveliness of the work. If you'd like to see it for yourself, please do not hesitate to contact us to arrange a viewing. And, as always, stay tuned here as we will be posting images from the show throughout the month.

About the show:

"The Sun Won't Leave Me Alone" is an installation marking the Summer Solstice, an event that may typically go unnoticed in the shadowless cubicle of Mauve?

The Solstice is a day when our shadows are the shortest in the year, giving us an impression that we can exist in the absence of our shadows and that such absence make us better workers. Through manufacturing shadows, "The Sun Won't Leave Me Alone," celebrates the fertility and virility brought by the interdependence of sun and shadow in order to counter the sterility of the sunless cubicle cosmology in shadowless office times. It will also prepare us for the coming of the Midsummer's Night, the beginning of the shadow half of the year when we watch our shadows grow.

About the artist:

Yueni Zhong is a graduate student in the History of Art department at UC Berkeley currently working on her dissertation on the material correspondence between the human body and cosmological bodies in transcosmological situations. To put her theory in practice, she is currently working on her next art piece, where she will tattoo each of the 64 hexagrams from the Yijing onto 64 people. This project intends to karmically link these 64 people by the way they choose their fortunes. If interested, please contact the curators of Mauve? for more information.

June 21 - July 18

"The Sun Won't Leave Me Alone"
Yueni Zhong






















(“Shadow and Raisin in the Sun” (detail), 7 cm x 7 cm, sunlight, rehydrated raisin, cyanotype paper, water, 2010)

What Became of Him I do not Know (detail)

(coffee, coloured pencil, oil pastel, photographs, 18" x 24", Nadia Awad, 2009)

We were created to live in Paradise, and Paradise was designed to serve us. Our designation has been changed; we are not told whether this happened to Paradise as well. (84)

* This piece contains two words “batal” which means ‘to sever/cut off’ and “baTal” which means hero. The roots are not related, though to someone whose understanding of Semitic roots is kind of marginal a misreading of this sort can occur, which happens all the time to Jews from Arab countries in Israel whose parents decided not to pass down the language. So, this piece is a commentary on that sort of transformation.

Drawn from a Photograph I Took

(pencil, oil, pastel, 11” x 14”, Nadia Awad, 2009)

The fact that the only world is a constructed world takes away hope and gives us certainty. (62)