BANK is honored to present Tim Crowley’s latest paintings and to launch Sun Yitian’s new NFT digital animation “Take Off” at the upcoming Art Basel Hong Kong.
Sun’s work is a limited edition animation on ERC-1155 standard, produced in collaboration with BCA Labs. The image of the Owl is generated using Sun’s original painting as reference; and the data movements are bound to create a unique narrative that is permanently stored on the blockchain.
The work is based on the diptych "Taking Off at Dusk", inspired by the owl of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom in Roman mythology, and also a symbol of thought and reason. The white owl only appears at night and the black owl only appears during the day. The owls chase one another, but never encounter and meet because of the inversion of time. The black and white owls, seemingly two separate individuals, are in fact the incarnation of one another, switching roles at certain moments, and unfolding a complex metaphor of identity in the process.
Tim Crowley uses the art fair booth as a site-specific stage for his satirical tropes and continued fascination with the exhibition poster. Having traversed the full gamut of art industry roles and geographical centers, Crowley, from an insider’s perspective looking out, anticipates contemporary art exhibitions of the far future and in far off places with an absurd and often comic flare. Conflating, on the surface, random and unrelated artists with images, sometimes pulled from the artists’ previous series, and quirky exhibition titles, Crowley playfully fetishises, critiques, exaggerates, and celebrates the conceits and contradictions of contemporary art and its attendant advertisements.
