This early video work features the artist herself dashing through subway tunnels, suggesting themes of movement, transitory experiences, and the artist engaging directly with her surroundings.

1. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
Bigass blood robot thing

2. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
Bigass blood robot thing

3. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
Bigass blood robot thing

4. • Janel: I don’t get it.
• Anna: Is it a reference to an Oil spill ??
• Material: Ink? Oil? Blood? Grape Juice? Cranberry Juice? Wine?
• Chess: “Can’t Help Myself” is the title
• Raian: Thinking about the title: It’s like the machine wants to clean
the substance, but not matter how many times it does it, it keeps going,
and this piece makes me feel incomplete, and mad. Like it’s a waste of
time.
• Gio: Displacement, the machine itself doesn’t seem to know what to
do or where to go…the oily substance is moving around….kind of
being controlled by the machine.
• Alex: It’s ;like the way that we try to stop things, but we just keep
doing it again. We try to fix things, but we just can’t help ourselves.
KT: It’s got an Obsessive-Compulsive side to it….those little drips it
leaves behind are driving me nuts.
Dolfo: Thinking of the whaling industry???
Anna: It’s giving us Obsessive Compulsive Disorder...like it’s not
making enough of an effort to completely clean it up.

5. • Riddles: It’s oddly satisfying, it’s so perfectly cleaning the floor.
• Kristen: I disagree. It isn’t that satisfying. I was hoping it would make
a shape….and not drip so much.
• Wing: Agrees with Riddles. The texture of the “ink” makes me feel
calm.
• Angel: What’s the purpose???
• Cailan: Those movements it makes are very.....performative…?
• Jess: It makes me feel like when you start cleaning something but the
mess never ends. Like with a mop when it just spreads the dirt around.
• Tae: gotta get that swiffer, homie.
• Angel: cleaning the mess makes it worse?
• Camila: What’s the liquid?
• Wine, ink, blood, paint?
• Lina: The brush shows the cleanliness, but no matter how much it
mops up, there’s no end to it. There’s no end to this…

6. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
medium:
Kuka industrial
robot, stainless
steel and rubber,
cellulose ether in
colored water,
lighting grid with
Cognex visual-
recognition
sensors, and
polycarbonate
wall with
aluminum frame

7. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu's works always
start with a paradox. Their early objects
and installations are made from real
cadavers or human fat tissues. Yet, even
though playing on the speculative and
the spectacular, they focus on the
investigation of the paradox rather than
merely exploiting the spectacular.
The tension between the bodies, organic
tissues or animals and their artistic
manifestations corresponds to the
transition of subjects from the plane
of immanence (existing through
everything) onto the plane of
transcendence (to go beyond the
physical limits).
Human Oil
2000

8. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Safety Island
2003
In one piece,
Safety Island, a live Asian tiger
paces inside a large steel cage,
which is constructed alongside an
exhibition hall's four interior walls,
creating a corridor for the walking
tiger and serving as a virtual moat
for the human spectators.
Those who wish to enter or exit the
gallery must gather around the only
two convertible 'drawbridges'.
Depending on the tiger's position,
the cage's steel bars may be folded
sideways to create an arrow
passageway, allowing single-filed
spectators to go through it.

9. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Safety Island
2003
In one piece,
Safety Island, a live Asian tiger
paces inside a large steel cage,
which is constructed alongside an
exhibition hall's four interior walls,
creating a corridor for the walking
tiger and serving as a virtual moat
for the human spectators.
Those who wish to enter or exit the
gallery must gather around the only
two convertible 'drawbridges'.
Depending on the tiger's position,
the cage's steel bars may be folded
sideways to create an arrow
passageway, allowing single-filed
spectators to go through it.

10. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
I am Here
2006
Fiberglass、 Silica Gel、
Simulation of Sculpture

11. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
I am Here
2006
Fiberglass、 Silica Gel、
Simulation of Sculpture

12. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
I am Here
2006
Fiberglass、 Silica Gel、
Simulation of Sculpture

13. Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Old Persons Home

14. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Old Persons Home
2007
Electric Wheelchair、
Fiberglass、 Silica Gel、
Simulation of Sculpture
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu's work Old People's
Home consists of 13 hyper-realistic, life-sized
human replicas of army generals, religious and
political leaders of various nationalities,
wearing very formal garb, all sitting in electro-
motion wheelchairs. This is a large-scale site-
specific installation. The hyper-realistic
human replicas in the wheelchairs either stare
at something or simply nod their heads or look
like they may be taking a nap.

15. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Old Persons Home
2007
Electric Wheelchair、
Fiberglass、 Silica Gel、
Simulation of Sculpture
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
The wheelchairs automatically change
directions when they collide with each other or
with the wall. They are in constant motion,
ceaselessly colliding, and their faces are
emotionless, thus creating a kind of
indifferent and eccentric atmosphere. They do
not talk to each other, so the scene resembles a
collective hush, created by people from
various cultural, social and racial backgrounds.
The scene represents a group of people who
have no direct relationship…

16. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
Angel
2008
Silica Gel、
Fiberglass、
Stainless Steel、
Woven Mesh

17. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
Angel
2008
Silica Gel、
Fiberglass、
Stainless Steel、
Woven Mesh

18. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
Angel
2008
Silica Gel、
Fiberglass、
Stainless Steel、
Woven Mesh

19. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Angel
2008
Silica Gel、Fiberglass、 Stainless Steel、
Woven Mesh
…
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
The angel, an old woman
in a white gown and with
featherless wings, is lying
face-down on the ground;
maybe sleeping, maybe
dead, but certainly
immobile and frozen into
an all too realistic image.
The supernatural being,
now nothing more than an
impotent creature, can
neither carry out any
supreme will nor be of any
help to those believing in
its existence. The angel is
true but ineffective;
dreams and hopes are
sincere yet vain.

20. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Can’t Help
Myself
2016
Kuka industrial
robot, stainless
steel and rubber,
cellulose ether in
colored water,
lighting grid with
Cognex visual-
recognition
sensors, and
polycarbonate
wall with
aluminum frame
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/

21. What ideas & themes do we see emerging in the
artwork of Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
KT: They’re dealing with a lot of real life problems. How we interact with
each other, acknowledge, and walk away….
Gio: Themes of POWERLESSNESS. Like the angel, old people.
JJ: These artists remind me a bit of Reyes, taking life’s problems and flipping
them in a way that make people more aware of it.
Rizzi: Agrees with Gio and JJ….a lot to do with control and power. They
make decisions in their art that have a big effect on you…using corpses, or
making things hyper realistic, it affects you a certain way.
Dolfo: Diverging from Reyes’ ideas….this has more to do with human nature.
How we perceive ourselves and others…and less to do with the
social/political stuff.
Anna: Still curious about their intentions…Reyes’ work is much more
obvious….this work makes you think a bit more.
.
.

22. http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/
.Taeron: There’s a sense of hopelessness with their work, a sadness.
Things that can’t help themselves (wheelchairs, fallen angel)
Angel: Despite the desire to help others, there’s some restrictions in life
that prevent you from doing it. Like with the Angel piece, it’s immobile,
but it wasn’t at one time.
Camila: A sense of always doing the same thing over and over again.
Steve: Everyone has a routine that we always do…that one specific thing
that we must do. There’s stuff you want to do and stuff you have to do.
Riddles: Like when we’re walking in the street and I realize that I’m on
auto-pilot.
Angel: Like in religion how we have a certain person who we look up
to…we restrict ourselves to be like that person.
Jess: We always say how our lives suck, but we don’t change our
routines…we’re too stubborn to change it!
Tae: Like with history, how we keep making the same mistakes over and
over again.
What ideas & themes do we see emerging in the
artwork of Sun Yuan & Peng Yu

23. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
Can’t Help Myself employs an industrial robot,
visual recognition sensors, and software systems
to examine our increasingly automated global
reality, one in which territories are
mechanically controlled and machine-human
relationship is rapidly changing.
Placed behind clear acrylic walls, the robot
performs one specific action: it contains a
viscous, deep-red liquid within a predetermined
area.
When the visual-recognition sensors detect that
the fluid has strayed too far, the arm frenetically
shovels it back into place, leaving smudges on
the ground and splashes on the surrounding
walls.
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/

24. Sun Yuan &
Peng Yu
Live and work in
Beijing.
Can’t Help Myself
2016
Sun Yuan (1972) and Peng Yu (1974) are
known for using dark humor to address
contentious topics, and their robot’s repetitive
and endless “dance” presents and absurd
Sisyphean view of contemporary issues
surrounding migration and sovereignty.
However, the bloodstain-like marks that
accumulate around the robot evoke the
violence that results from surveilling and
guarding border zones. Such visceral
associations call attention to the consequences
of authoritarianism and the increasing use of
technology to monitor our environment.
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/

25. Sun Yuan
& Peng Yu
Describe the art making process for these
artists…
• Khiri: Very cuirous about the material world and how it’s connected
to spirituality.
• Janel: They think alike!
• KT: Art is reflection of a person’s will…and there’s a contradiction
between human nature and machinery, & social order and human
nature.
• Erin: “Every relationship you have is political.” Everyone is always
struggling with each other.
• Alex: yes, it’s like how every relationship has elements of friendship or
animosity….every relationship is like an alliance and gives you
convenience in some ways.
• Chess: when you analyze why you’re friends with certain people, it can get
uncomfortable.
• Dolfo: We tend to choose people who have similar standards or morals as
us.
• Gio: They both had art introduced in the same manner…art is an
emotional lens….venting through curiosity, anger,

26. Sun Yuan
& Peng Yu
Describe the art making process for these
artists…
• Tash: Making connections between the spiritual world and physical
world. Turning fantasies into reality.
• Jess: A lot of their physical modelling has to do with math
(engineering) but the idea comes from a much more abstract place. It’s
bringing together science and art, breaking those barriers.
• Camila: “All relationships are political” everyone is impacted
through each relationship.
• Kristen: IT could mean that all relationships can morph, change,
or even clash.
• Anesia: In most relationships, there’s a power dynamic of who has
it and who doesn’t.
• Tash: There’s a question of superiority here. #junioryear

27. Sun Yuan
& Peng Yu
Write a short paragraph in your notebooks
about a relationship you have that is political in
nature.
“All relationships are political. Person to
person, person to nation, nation to nation,
etc.”

28. Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Final thoughts?
Questions?
• KT: These artists open up new perspectives for us.
They’ve got a strange way of coming at problems. But
they’ve got a strong message to convey about the
relationships of …everything.
• Jess: I love their work. There’s a lot of thought in each
piece, and challenges the way we think.
• Dolfo: Is there a name for their “genre?”
• kozak: installation/sculpture/experiential?
• Seth: Their work makes me feel awkward. Like those
people who do work that NO ONE wants to do.
• Chess: They’re attacking these issues by using these
deviant perspectives (and materials) because there’s
something to be said for how ‘universal’ the human body
is to us.
• Erin:n Their work is uncomfortable to look at. Can’t Help
Myself drives me insane. And the Angel piece is just so
WEEEEIRRRDDD!! And it looks SO real!
• KT: they’re like the “johnny depp” of art…kinda weird, gory, and shocking.
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/

29. Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Final thoughts?
Questions?
• Anesia: I really like the approach of these artists.
They’re addressing big themes that go on in our
world and they’re using hyper-realistic pieces.
• Steph: These artists have a bit of a minimalist
approach, but their meaning is not simple at all,
there’s a lot there.
• Jess: I LOVE their work. I resonate with these dark
humor pieces. And then there’s so much depth to
their work, even if it’s a little sad or depressing. Their
work is unconventional!
• Wing: Their philosophy makes me a feel a little sad,
it’s so deep.
• Michelle: Their work is really cool, but when you get
to the meaning, the joy you got from seeing it is
removed.
• Sean: And what’s left is a sense of thinking
http://www.sunyuanpengyu.com/

30. Kan Xuan (born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam

31. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
“I focus on the mundane emotions
of everyday life. I’m also very
interested in the subtle but
complicated relationships among
visual language, sound, images,
and human memory.”
Tash: a mix of video and other
media.
Michael: really full of life…but
maybe confusing? Maybe some
conflict
Lina: I expect something with
nature..

32. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
“I focus on the mundane emotions
of everyday life. I’m also very
interested in the subtle but
complicated relationships among
visual language, sound, images,
and human memory.”
KT: Seems kinda humble.
Dolfo: She likes Beijing because it makes
her feel invisible…she finds this to be a
benefit.
Khiri: I’m expecting a lot of NATURE in her
work.
Chess: I think it’s going to be lots of
everyday life of people who are not
thought of.
Anna: I think she sees complicated
relationships in simple things.

33. Kan Xuan (born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam

34. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Kanxuan! Ai!……
video
1999
1’27 ’’
Kan Xuan’s work is often based on personal experience, and she herself sometimes
features, as in the early video Kanxuan! Ai! (1999) in which she is seen dashing
through subway tunnels shouting her own name, as if searching for herself, and
answering in the affirmative, “Ai!”. She is moving against a tide of heaving
humanity, at once anxious, funny, romantic, whilst making a clear political
statement, representing the plight of an individual in the face of a totalitarian mass.

35. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Looking looking
looking for……
2001, video, 2'58"
Other early works convey the personal as physical. Looking, looking, looking for …
(2002) traces the movement of a spider across two naked bodies, young, lithe, one
male, one female. Viewers are pushed and pulled between feelings that arise from
such sensuality and arachnophobic tendencies while identifying with the
oblivious creature, simply seeking a place to hide. In the same year Kan Xuan
made A persimmon, in which she passes a ripe piece of fruit between her hands,
reducing it to a juicy pulp in the process and so combining lusciousness and

36. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
A Happy Girl
2001,
video,
1’18"
In contrast, A happy girl (2002) is wonderfully straightforward. Made soon
after the artist arrived in Amsterdam from Beijing, it shows an empty
sculpture pedestal in a leafy garden, suddenly occupied by the artist, naked
and dancing. The playful freedom of her movement suggests sheer joy,
found in herself and in her circumstances.

37. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

38. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

39. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

40. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and
works in Beijing and
Amsterdam
Ku Lüé Er (ko-looa-uh)
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

41. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFofUJuqH
lY&t=115s

42. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
“Making art for me is very helpful in expanding my
horizons. History to me is not something simply
about the past to be studied academically. Rather,
it’s an extension of emotion.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFofUJuqH
lY&t=115s

43. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
“Making art for me is very helpful in
expanding my horizons. History to me is not
something simply about the past to be studied
academically. Rather, it’s an extension of
emotion.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFofUJuqH
lY&t=115s
JJ: Seeing the world from different perspectives,
like a bird or lizard (enter into Rango tangent)
Dolfo: I struggle to describe what she actually
does. But the statement about the bird and the
lizard enlightened you, gave me a deeper
perspective.
KT: I thought her work would be about present
day society and where she is now…but she’s
really looking at past places and comparing it
with the present.
Khiri: Reminds me of the press release that we
read first, and how each history is from a point
of view, with personal bias that tints the story.
Ku Lüé Er (ko-looa-uh)
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

44. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
“Making art for me is very helpful in
expanding my horizons. History to me is not
something simply about the past to be studied
academically. Rather, it’s an extension of
emotion.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFofUJuqH
lY&t=115s
Tash: IT’s cool that she actually went to the site
to see the history in person.
Jess: This connects back to the press release
about how these artists question historical
norms.
Angel: When we see her pieces, we all have
different emotions that impact us. Like in
Looking Looking Looking For…
Jess: Because she juxtaposes different
mundane/everyday emotions, there’s some
beauty in that.
:
Ku Lüé Er (ko-looa-uh)
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble

45. Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of Land”
2016
Video Installation with sound,
stone, and marble
Meaning to “Circle a piece of land,” Ku Lüé
Er is a phrase from a dialect that many regions
in North China share. It relates to the act of
claiming or enclosing territory in order to
build a city. Kan Xuan’s work, which borrows
this expression for its title, began with a five-
month-long research journey across the vast
Central Asian plateau to 110 ancient
settlements situated along a geographical
border that separates abundant terrain from
areas receiving less than 400mm of annual
rainfall. This line not only traditionally
demarcated agricultural civilizations from
nomadic ones but also helped divisively shape
the regions military and dynastic histories.
Former sites of negotiation between different
political and economic powers, these cities
have since eroded into the landscape.

46. Kan Xuan
(born 1972) Lives and works
in Beijing and Amsterdam
Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of
Land”
2016
Video Installation with
sound, stone, and marble
Kan Xuan took thousands of mobile-phone pictures of these sites, which she
later color-manipulated and edited together into the stop motion videos seen on
the wall monitors. These eleven videos are accompanied by projected hand-
drawn maps of the places she visited, and stone sculptures echoing ancient
fences or barriers. Another video depicts a children’s game involving smashing
glad into th ground. Its noise evokes the creation of these cities. Her intimate
portrayal of these age-old sites undermines their monumentality, while their
states of decay signal our collective oblivion on the trajectory of history.
.

47. Ku Lüé Er
“To Circle a Piece of Land”
2016
Video Installation with sound,
stone, and marble
Here’s a sample! Thanks Tash!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAGYRh
QGITU

48. Kan Xuan Final thoughts? Ideas?
• Raian: I like her work, and the usage of putting
those pictures together shows a lot of dedication.
But she’s got this other side of her work with
those spiders on the body. I had a gut reaction to
that piece.
• Khiri: I feel a bit indifferent, but in Looking
Looking Looking For… I wonder if there are other
pieces that would also make me feel
uncomfortable. But I don’t have a big emotional
reaction to her work.
• Dolfo: I REALLY REALLY LIKE HER WORK. IT’s
thought provoking but simple at the same time. I
think some may undermine her work, but I have a
connection to it.
• Gio: I’m swaying towards the positive, I like the
concepts of her work, but not the execution of it.
It’s difficult to emotionally involve myself.
• . :

49. Kan Xuan Final thoughts? Ideas?
• Jess: There’s a bit of spirituality to her work
perhaps?
• Kristen: She really captures the perspectives of
animals, or as a viewer actually in the space. You
feel like you’re there.
• Angel: She’s so unintentionally deep. The viewer
really has to go deep though, so they can
interpret it in a “difficult” way. It’s not
straightforward.
• Tash: The depth that she has is seen in her
answers during interviews. She’s clearly
thinking a TON about this stuff!
• Andia: I like her style, and her photos are
interesting, they’re at interesting angles.
• Michelle: Some people think art should be
“perfect” woops. I got lost.
• Camila: She doesn’t just involve video. She uses
sculpture, which adds a new depth to her art.