little lies and counterweights, little lies and counterweights, curated by Jan Avgikos, features four sculpture pieces from artist Yan Jin and multiple photographs from artist Xiaoran Xu. Both artists craft different material experiences for the viewers. The shared ground of their work is steeped in misdeeds and disturbances. Couched in a blanket of silence, violent that might have gone undiscovered are revealed for our consideration.

Yan Jin’s sculptural project is a series of counterweights produced with low-density foam, endowed to critique power and authority. Used to establish precise standards of measurement, counterweights belong to the worlds of trade, technics, and global politics. Jin’s counterweights reference rules that are imposed and enforced by institutions and systems. With their distressed and eroded surfaces, her facsimiles mimic ruins, as if to comment on the erosion of hierarchies that once defined the society. The statement of her cylindrical forms lies in their inaccuracy, fakeness, and resistance to the precision and perfection for which the originals stand.

Xiaoran Xu’s luminous images, characterized by saturated color and dramatic lighting, align with high-end visual culture. Central to her staged still-life pictures are references to playthings enjoyed by children around the world for generations. Yet, it is their demise as murdered and dismembered victims that is showcased rather than their playful antics. By making visible cultural memories of abuse and extinguishing dreams of innocence, Xu creates a lens through which to see the world. These pictures enable us to revisit and to better understand a place we’ve all known. What is certain is that her photographs reveal a fascination with things that we don’t really like to look at straightaway—but paradoxically can’t get enough of.



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