Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao
Location: Asia Society & Museum, New York
Date: September 2012
Curators: Melissa Chiu, Michelle Yun
Services Provided: Exhibition Design, Engineering, Fabrication Support
Excerpt from Asia Society Press Release:
“Lin is one of only a handful of women artists of her generation born in the 1960s to have emerged during the 1990s when the Chinese art world was coming of age and gaining substantial international recognition. Her works over the past twenty years are as much about her personal journey as an artist as they are about a desire to articulate broader social issues. Through her focus on a female experience, she comments on the enormous social progress made in Chinese society during Mao Zedong’s tenure, yet she hints that some promises remain unfulfilled. Her consistent exploration of these issues, sometimes latent, makes her a significant artist of our time. This exhibition represents Lin Tianmiao’s first major solo exhibition in the United States.”
This project is a testament to teamwork- the ability of an institution, a foreign artist, a local fabricator and a designer to work together to create something monumental. It is also an example of our ability to provide services beyond design. The exhibition was a combination of old and new works. Many were large scale installations. The artist had very specific, organic shapes that she wanted to create and integrate seamlessly into the existing architecture.
In order to achieve the desired effect expressed in her drawings and SketchUp files, we remodeled all of the geometry to within .125” in a manufacturing format that could be read by the fabricator’s CNC milling machine. Once the forms were sculpted in 3D we sliced them into layers that could be milled from sheets of high density foam. These layers were then laminated, primed and sanded smooth before being installed in the gallery.
Photo Credit: Michael Bodycomb