Solo program
Chronus Art Center (CAC)
Flux in Dust
Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Flux in Dust, the first iteration of CAC’s 2023 new program CAC Projects, in collaboration with the artist LONG Pan.
Leaf and Fire Works are derived from a research trip conducted by the artist in Guiyu, Guangdong, in 2021. As one of the largest e-waste dumps of the world, the small town has played a crucial role behind the scenes of today’s fast-forwarding planetary computational capacity in the past two decades. By exploring the sedimentary traces of metals in the region, LONG Pan initiated an artistic experiment.
Fire Works presents a splendid moment of copper, a base metal dispersed in the global material economy. After undergoing extraction and liquefaction, it circulates back to the earth through a traditional Chinese ritual iron fire work (打铁花). Among the exploding sparks, the show also unveils the process of LONG Pan’s alchemy in the opposite direction. She was intrigued by plants rich in heavy metal accumulations that grow in an opaque blank area in satellite imagery. The heavy metals in discarded electronics from all over the world permeate and condense within them. In Leaf, plant roots are uprooted from the soil, and the extracted metals are transmuted into the glaze on the surface of leaf-shaped ceramic pieces. Under a microscope, the metals are eventually visualized as glittering dust.
Metals in Leaf and Fire Works circulating among the technological, the earth, and the plants alongside the pulsation of organic matters reveal the fluctuating permeation between life and nonlife as well as the contemporary magic of alchemy: chemistry and geographically dispersed logistic infrastructures. The complex social, political, and conceptual disturbances spanning various systems and scales on the planet also manifest through camera lenses and microscopes.