Weekend

Which is more important, artwork or art archive?

Which is more important, the image itself or the process of image-making, the way images are viewed, or the positioning of the image?

The problem of photography today has officially shifted to the problem of images. With “Weekend”, artist and Beijing/Los Angeles resident Lei Lei demonstrates not only an artistic nostalgia, but also a sustained pursuit of history, family, and personal identity. His work can be seen as a “creative thinking” about this subject, an art strategy related to the imagination of the future, and a paradoxical stance toward emotions that cannot be returned to in the present.

As philosopher and art critic Boris Groys has pointed out: “Life can be documented, but not exhibited.”

It is precisely this complexity of contradictions, and the images that constitute the artist’s work, in which different images between visual conversions and dialectical forms of calmness and vibrancy are exhibited, that make “nostalgia” a truly contemporary medium in the practice of image art.

—— Dong Bingfeng

About the Artist

Lei Lei, born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province in 1985.
In 2009, he received his master's degree in animation from Tsinghua University.
In 2014, he received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council.
In 2017, he worked as faculty in the CalArts Experimental Animation program.
In 2018, he was invited to be a new academician of the Short Films and Feature Animation branch.
In 2019, his first feature film "Breathless Animals" was selected for the Berlinale Forum.