Lin Yilin

the sculpture in two parts, the base signed in pinyin, dated 2005 and numbered 2/2
the photograph signed in pinyin, dated 2005 and numbered 2/2, framed under glass

Guangzhou, Guangdong Museum of Art, BEYOND: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization - The Second Guangzhou Triennial, 2005-06
Kunstmuseum Bern, Guangzhou-Cantonese Artists in the Sigg Collection, 2006 (another example exhibited)

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, China Onward, Denmark, 2007, pp. 174-175, illustrated in color

The sculpture is generally in good condition. The photograph has a short crease to the top edge, approx 2cm. It is framed under Plexiglas and was not examined out of frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Chinese conceptual artist, sculptor and performance artist Lin Yilin (b. 1964) has been a leader of the Chinese avant-garde art world for nearly two decades. One of the founding members of the important Big Tail Elephant Group in 1990, Lin graduated with a degree in sculpture from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1987.  Whether having a stone wall built around him in a gallery space as in his performance The Result of 1,000 Pieces in 1994 or stopping traffic by building and then moving a short length of wall made from cinder blocks across a major thoroughfare as in Safely Maneuvering Across Lin He Road in 1995, public performance and spectacle plays a major role in Lin's body of work.  Outside of his many major performance-based works, Lin has also created monumental sculptures that seem to undermine or at least question the traditional values of his native China and its more recent political history.  For example, his massive work Our Future of 2002 features a 4.5-meter-tall by 6.5-meter-long cement block wall built around the face and chest of a mammoth mythological Chinese lion statue made from fiberglass.  In this work, Lin's common theme of history being frozen in space due to the constraints of modernization plays the lead role, whereas in other works like The Wall Itself from 1993, Lin suspends plastic bags filled with water from the brick wall in which they are embedded to address the equally important topic of man versus nature.  Whether directly present or conceptually represented, the human body, especially that of Lin himself, nearly always plays a central role in the artist's work, either in terms of scale, measurement, masquerade or endurance.  Lin Yilin has, as a result, created a body of work that is always and forever tied to his own.

One of the artist's most well-known works is titled I am on the Right (Lot 178), a performance piece from 1997.  Two photographs documenting this two-hour-long performance are available in this sale.  In the work, Lin dressed up in white pajamas with blue decorative accents and then painted any exposed skin white to give himself the air of a porcelain sculpture.  For part of the performance, Lin wheeled himself around the courtyard of a grand historic structure in a wheelchair; for the other part, he climbed onto a plinth abutting the main entrance to the building, taking on the role of the massive Chinese lion sculpture that might normally be found there.  Indeed, in historic times, the Imperial household would have been flanked with such celestial beasts; in modern times, one might find such creatures outside of a Chinese restaurant or casino.  By placing himself in the position of a symbol of power and stamina, Lin humorously mocks the traditions of China and Mother Nature in one fell swoop.  To make his joke even more apparently clear, Lin fabricated the sculpture on the left side of the entranceway to include not one lion, but two, deeply entrenched in a sex act, as if they are attempting to produce the next generation of magical animals to guard the Imperial family, and by extension, China.  By not only producing his work as a performance, but by further representing (re)production in the form of the mating lions, Lin seems to question the role of the artist in contemporary Chinese society.  Is he to be lauded like the literati painters of the past, or mocked like the plastic shell of power found outside a tacky restaurant on the outskirts of town?

The concept of reproduction also plays the central role in another of Lin's major works, Missing Dolly (Lot 177), of 2005.  Lin pokes fun at a variety of topics in this work that features a large fiberglass sheep attempting to climb a mountain of the same material and far above a photograph of a very real sheep, the well-known ewe named Dolly, famous the world over for being the first successful cloned animal in the world.  It is important to note that Lin's home city of Guangzhou is nicknamed the Sheep City and is home to a well-known sculpture called the "Five Sheep Sculpture" that was constructed in the city's Yue Xiu Park in 1959 and which narrates the creation myth of Guangzhou and its connection to, of course, sheep.  By combining his hometown's deep past with a most-contemporary topic revolving around cloning and genetics, Lin once again blurs the line between history and modernity, and in so doing, becomes a cultural critic cum art trickster par excellence. 

-Eric Shiner