Albion Jeune
Timur Si Qin
21.Nov.24 – 12.Jan.25
Albion Jeune presents Trust the River, Timur Si-Qin’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Drawing from a rich artistic practice across media, spanning more than a decade, and with a deep respect for nature, Si-Qin’s new works continue to explore urgent themes at the intersection of ecology, culture, and spirituality.
In the darkened gallery space spotlights foreground a series of wall-based installations surrounding an ornamental plant positioned on a screen that replays an ever-continuous flow of water at the centre of the room. Building on recent series conceived in biodiverse wilderness regions, the works are a meditation on the role of faith and spirituality amid crises at the scale of the planetary, the social, and the personal. Through his travels around the world, Si-Qin spent time in the rocky desert landscape of the Al-‘Ulā region in Saudi Arabia, as well as the steep Hengduan mountain ranges in Southwestern China. While both regions are known as biodiversity hotspots, they also serve as sacred places to their inhabitants with their unique treasures of the world, to cultivate ancient knowledge and aid complex networks of ecosystems.
Building on his ongoing interest in the correlation between biodiversity and cultural diversity, indigenous wisdom centred on the natural world and its conservation, Si-Qin’s sculptural works take on organic forms in all-metallic sheen. The artist has once more deferred to the precise technique of 3-D printing, subsequently casting the pieces in stainless steel. In conjunction with respecting ancient ways, Si-Qin also acknowledges emerging (sub)cultures by lending his works an affective contemporary visuality.
Si-Qin strives to portray nature in its closest, most honest form, free from the reductive socio-linguistic filters that often see it only as a resource in a Western-centric perspective. It is through close observation of the intricate details of the natural world where the idea for the rectangular panels made from 3-D scans of the cliffs of Al-‘Ulā, mounted on biomorphic lattices, the round floral relief, and the Rhododendron sculpture had originated. The exhibition culminates in the delicate sculpture of a Larch Conifer bonsai, as scanned and modelled from the species Larix potaninii in the Hengduan Mountains, each needle immaculately formed, sitting on an LED screen of a flowing river referencing the exhibition title and vice versa: A faith in the meandering, and ever-renewing genesis of the natural world.
Proceeds from a Rock panel work, made from the 3-D scans of Saudi Arabian cliffs, will support the permanent conservation of 35,014 acres of land in Ausangate, Peru. This Indigenous-led conservation project safeguards a vital and sacred high Andean ecosystem, including threatened wetlands and glaciers that provide essential water resources to surrounding communities and crucial ecosystem services to the region. As a strategic climate donation by the artist and the gallery, the sale of this artwork will receive a cumulative 300% in matching funds from partner organisations. The funds will support the formal declaration of the conservation area in Peru.
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Albion Jeune