LOST WEEKEND MEETS YOUNG ART

As an obsessive collector, Rupert conjures shimmering tapestries woven together by words, drawings and moving images taken from the immediate surroundings he grew up in and in which he is still immersed. In his recontextualization, the fragments become shadows without a body, they are piled up like an enormous skyscraper in a Jenga game, overloading the audience and at the same time preparing itself to collapse any minute. The ruins are then transformed into the facades and the symbols onto his crayon drawings, which unfold like a scroll with multiple perspectives; revealing itself on one end while hiding on the other.

As a detached observer, Rupert retreats into an omnipresent CCTV, which keeps extending itself, not only to the outer world shaped by fragmental images but also to the inner space of “home sweet home”. What is once familiar turns uncanny. The intimate and cozy middle class living scenarios are fabricated by the artist into a monitored laboratory, where mental and behavioral codes are amplified and exaggerated. While bedroom wallpapers are peeled off, bathroom mirrors are smashed and books are set on fire in the study, family members are flattened as two-dimensional figures or staged as experimental subjects. In constant attempts to trigger the displacement of roles within the family, Rupert reassembles them into temporary forms of film crew, circus acts or guerilla members. Transpassing layers of images which have been penetrating into their interior spaces for years and manifesting their invisibility as haunting ghosts. [Jianling]