Since Jun 22, 2021, Key Elements was established by five WOC artists from different fields, as a non-profit art and publisher organization, with the slogan "For Artists who keep creating ".
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During the Pandemic, we interview, curate, create together, and we plan for the platform together. To contribute to the betterment of the platform spirit, here we are presenting you the Group Exhibition by key members of the Key Elements, KE Zhang, Chenyu Lin, Vivi Shen, Yuxuan Wei, and Wantong Yao.
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The group Annual Exhibition is a representation of the diversity of arts of the organization, as also a chance to record our Growth.
In this choose your own adventure book, time is a subjective perception. Memories and reality overlaid on each other. Revisiting sites gives the audience a flashback experience. The audience is expected to be comforted and meditated through this interweaving adventure across space-time. Besides the physical book, I also created an online version, providing a better experience for people who do not have access to physical copies.
REVISITING
Yuxuan Wei
Book Design / 2021 / Self-initiated Project
Dissolve is a 3D game that utilizes first-person shooter mechanics to talk about housing demolition, urban development, and memory loss. The project features a real-time generated environment that dissolves and disintegrates in response to the viewer’s gaze, where the space is a digital restoration of my grandma’s demolished old house in Shanxi, China.
DISSOLVE
Wantong Yao
3D Game / 2020 / Self-initiated Project
MARS POKER
Vivi Shen
Paper Cards / July 2021 / Dimension 2.5in x 3.5in / Self-initiated Project
Mars Poker Cards are given as a gift to Martian residents. The purpose of this project is to provide an opportunity for potential life on Mars to enjoy human board games. As with traditional poker, the Mars Poker Cards are based on the astronomical calendar. For instance, the 91 cards correspond to the 91 Martian weeks that comprise a Martian year. Due to Mars's four seasons, this poker game features four suits. Four suits are divided into two distinct color schemes, one for day and one for night. Each suit is inspired by one of four natural elements: metal, wood, water, or fire. Each suit contains 22 cards, which correspond to the 22 Martian days in a Martian month. Mars Poker features three unique cards, such as Jokers. As with jokers in poker, these three cards represent the sun and two of Mars' satellites. The color scheme is inspired by my extraterrestrial mystique regarding Mars. The complete poker set includes one packaging box, 91 cards, and a letter explaining the concept.
EPHEMERA
Chenyu Lin
2D Animation / 2021 / Tools Used: Procreate, AE, PR / Self-initiated Project
Ephemera like this multitude of beings, will one day break out of their cocoons and fly into the vast world. The woman is on the lighthouse, and the surroundings are changing, the waves keep lapping at the reef, the lights keep turning, but the lighthouse does not change, and the woman's movements are the same. It can be said that this is a kind of rationality and restraint in the face of the trend of the times, a variety of submissiveness that does not go with the flow, or it can be said to be a state of protected stubbornness or inward retreat. This also corresponds to the initial stage of a person, like an ephemera in its cocoon, in a state of being protected by its parents.
When a woman gets on a boat, she enters the torrent of the era to a certain extent. The boat is her carrier to join the trend of the times, just like a person entering the university, slowly contacting the society, slowly face to face with this real world. Faced with change, she no longer takes a stubborn and distant posture but begins to adapt to this change. Then she jumps into the sea and becomes a part of this change. She begins to understand the real principle behind the change, that underneath the change (the waves) is actually the same (the bottom of the sea). She begins to truly adapt to this change, to become one with the ever-changing laws. She bravely and independently becomes a part of the world, but this state is not following the waves, but she knows the law of change and is free to choose under this law.
WITNESS OF SPACE-TIME: 2072
KE Zhang
A Master Plan of Turning Desertified Area Back into Forest
It is imperative that we as designers and architects expand our mandate and consider material flows, temporal conditions, and the overall life-cycle of the structures and material assemblages that constitute what we refer to as the architectural project. Architecture is supposed to be a conversation between history and future and architecture design should deal with the conflict and cooperation between historical-cultural context and future development. The projects of the phase changes of material flows reflect on the impact such changes have on the morphological character of urban conglomerates, as these projects become embedded within environments over time.
The relationship between architecture projects and the sites should not only be considered in the current time, but be taken from a far reaching vision towards the future. Beyond the successful construction of the project, we need to consider the entire life of the building. When we put the project into the site, we import a variable into the site: the project not only changes its own site but also hangs its own larger context. We might influence the physical condition of the site with new landscape, new transportation, and new space provided by our project, and the invisible condition of the site with new opportunities, new service, and even new culture created by our project.
This project, Witness of Space-Time: 2072, is a master plan of turning desertified area back into forest within 50 years. The project, for planters working in the frontier, is a journey to create a new world from 2022 to 2072; for the future tourist, is a way to look back to the history from 2072 to 2022.
CURATOR: KE ZHANG, WANTONG YAO
EDITOR: WANTONG YAO, KE ZHANG
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: KE ZHANG