Chen Wei participates in an exhibition, “A Blueprint for Ruins” at White Rabbit Gallery. “A Blueprint for Ruins” reverberates with the shadows of the dispossessed within China’s urban metamorphosis. The exhibition presents Chen Wei’s Drunken Dance Hall (2015), which created a haunting space that invites viewers to recall moments of their own past, adrift in memory. The nightclub is abandoned, the dance floor littered with shards of glass, and a fallen mirror ball symbolises the end of the revelry. The only places in China where groups of people can gather together without attracting the attention of the authorities, nightclubs promise momentary pleasure and an escape from reality.
Curator: David Williams
Venue: White Rabbit Gallery, 30 Balfour Street, Chippendale NSW, 2008, Australia
Image caption: Chen Wei, Drunken Dance Hall, 2015, wood, steel, lights, acrylic, mirrors, sound, site specific, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of artist and White Rabbit Collection.