A Man

In today’s consumer society, privatized criteria are the advocate of self-belief that encourages self-obsession and self-enclosure. In a man’s flat, protected by his own understandings (knowledge), enchanted by his own narratology, a man expresses his enclosed freedom. Dan Walwin and Lizhen Tan’s videos take the personality and methodology of the man outside for tests. It is their videos that bring the outside world in (visual images).   [...]

Crowded city gives all behaviours a sense of bravery; vacant countryside field renders all acts with an escapist romance. In contrast to Lizhen’s direct engagement with the conception of others, Dan Walwin approaches an alter-ego by placing himself in solitude. In his videos, he climbs over walls, crawls through chimney, runs among a flock of cows. All these actions are purposeless at the first glance. But it is precisely the purposeless itself [that] confers his alter-ego a romantic way of being. The phone he places in the empty flat constantly dials the number of a remote suburb phone booth. It places solidarity in danger. The expectation and the fear of hearing someone picking up the phone bestow the romance a sense of sublime. For Walwin and Lizhen, they all address freedom, and more important they all enjoy a sense of freedom, either in the process of filming or in a self-obsessive way of looking into the mirror.

Wang Shang, extract from text to accompany exhibition A Man, Castles Gallery London, 2006