Guanyu Xu: to be seen
Out of sight, out of mind informs how photographer Guanyu Xu also feels out of place.
China, his home, though distant, remains an active memory, idealized by an Imperial robe hung under glass at this museum. A relic from antiquity that now like the artist has been relocated from afar. But what causes his uneasiness is also not knowing its exact origin, a lack of provenance that piques his curiosity and nags at the familiar, a part of what he thinks he should or ought to know. So his instinct then is look closer. As his title suggests, to examine what is hidden, lost, forgotten, unnoticed, or just ignored often in plain sight.
His installation willfully examines how disparate memories overlap related histories connecting the past to present. Through collaged images of Chinatown then and now adhered to the museum windows to neon text questioning mediated definitions of perceived visibilities to a small lenticular print, Guanyu Xu asks the viewer to rethink the known versus the unknown so not only what but also why and how these are seen to forge newer meanings.