National Gallery of Victoria chooses Sony VPL-FH31B large installation projectors for unique exhibit

The opening night of the large-scale, immersive video works of Wang Gongxin saw one of China’s most respected video artists in a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Wang Gongxin: Video Artist presents three works that reflect upon contemporary and traditional Chinese culture, displaying Gongxin’s characteristically subtle humour and subverting viewers’ expectations by turning seemingly ordinary situations upside down. Each of the works is projected onto its canvas by a combination of fourteen Sony professional VPL-FH31B large installation projectors.

Wang Gongxin said, “As a video artist, my work is made more attractive through higher quality projector equipment. Technology moves very quickly; in the past, the quality and resolution were not as high as they are today meaning that areas of detail were lost. The new Sony VPL-FH31B projectors are so rich in colour and their high definition quality is amazing. I have been waiting for three years to present my works Relating – it’s about Ya and Basic colour with projectors of this quality. The Sony VPL-FH31B projectors show every detail in vibrant colour, making my work complete so I can express my ideas and vision. They provide me with the ability to display my art at its full potential. The Sony VPL-FH31B projectors are that good that they allow me to maximise the possibilities of my practice to produce a more sensitive representation of life. Without detail, my work is nothing.”

Sony’s VPL-FH31B projector offers ultra high quality images with WUXGA resolution and full HD compatibility. As a large venue installation projector it also delivers amazing installation flexibility and hassle-free maintenance in a clever design. The VPL-FH31B boasts a native WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution with 4,300 lumens, an H/V lens shift function, DICOM GSDF simulation gamma mode and edge blending that ensures seamless large images with multiple projectors. The VPL-FH31B also allows portrait installation enabling the projection of a vertical long screen

Wang Gongxin: Video Artist is dominated by the major nine-screen installation Relating – it’s about Ya, 2010, an exuberantly filmic experience that deals with Beijing’s relentlessly fast pace of life in an intense display of sound, colour and movement. Basic colour, 2010, is a five channel video installation that depicts extreme close-ups of a naked body in which the human form is gradually hidden and abstracted by continuously-snowing powdered pigments. The third work, Dinner table, 2006, is a recent NGV acquisition which depicts a Chinese banquet laden with carefully presented dishes – projected onto a steeply tilted white table – defying gravity to slide slowly and impossibly upwards.

Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV, said: “The opening night was a huge success with Sony’s VPL-FH31B projectors helping Wang Gongxin’s work look exceptional in terms of colour reproduction, image resolution and definition. Gongxin is a driving force of China’s avant-garde movement and was among the first to create a site-specific video installation in that country. The NGV is pleased to exhibit his captivating video works and we are delighted with Sony’s involvement in this unique project.”

Born in Beijing in 1960, Gongxin trained as an oil painter in a socialist-realist style before his first encounter with video art in New York, where he lived from the late 1980s to mid 1990s. Back in Beijing, he and his artist wife Lin Tianmiao helped pioneer the Chinese video art movement, turning their home, and later a corner of a relative’s restaurant, into a non-profit space where fellow artists could meet and show their work. During this time he began to produce video art and became one of China’s earliest and most influential video artists with works that explored the diffusion of ideas between the West and China. Gongxin now lives and works between Beijing and New York.

Visit ngv.vic.gov.au for further details. Wang Gongxin: Video Artist will be on display at NGV International from 11 April to 28 September 2014.

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