Portfolio
Xingyang Cai
Xingyang Cai Apt707, 1801 N 10th St | Philadelphia | PA | 19122 | email:caixingyang@gmail.com tel: 414.688.8262
Education Jan2014 -May2017 Temple University, Fox School of Business Major: Finance | Minor: Fine Art • Recipient Scholarship, Temple, 2013 Jan2013 -Dec2013 University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee Major: Finance • Recipient Scholarship, UW-Milwaukee, 2012 • Dean’s List: Spring 2013, Fall 2013
Work Experience May 2015 – October 2015 E-Moderne Gallerie Philadelphia, PA, Gallery assistant • Layout exhibitions before the new shows. • Gallery network promotion, more focus on post new exhibitions information on social media • Manage trading information, record prices and buyer’s information. • Contact artists, makes me know more about their works March 2010 – May 2010 Shenyin &Wanguo Securities Co, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, Intern • Provide financial information to costumes, listing quoted company data including real-time and historical pricing, company released news and the analysis of the whole industry status • Talk with customers and help solve technical problems • Organize and record customer information.
Other Experience Jun 2016 Jun2015 July2015
Student, Career Discovery by Harvard GSD, Artist, SPI/SSI by Tyler School of Art, 2015 Artist, Exhibition Nine Human Head at Icebox project Space, 2015
Skills Softwares Photoshop Microsoft Excel InDesign Microsoft Word Rhino Microsoft PPT Premiere Languages English Chinese (Native Speaker)
Donald Trump said he would build an “impenetrable, physical,
tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall� between the US and Mecico.
The transparency created by the glass somewhat reflects the relationship between the United State and Mexico.
This kind of shape would allow people from both countries to step over the boarder and look at each other. A further imagination of Trump Wall is to turn it into a row of luxury townhouses. By transforming the public land into private properties, the division between two countries is further complicated by another layer division between public-private and classes. “No transgression� is reassured and practiced at national and domestic scales simultaneously.
Trump’s unexpected victory forced me to
rethink the reasons behind his success. The democratic elections in the United States might be the best material to observe the society. If connected to a series of events like Britain voting to leave E.U, and the European right of the-far-right forces rising. We can easily find the the three social phenomena behind Trump’ success: Deglobalization, Anti-elitism and Liberalism collapse. I’m trying to track these three ideologies with Trump’s plan of building wall on the US-Mexico border. In the video clips, I only use each quote from all ready-made videos to curate the opinion and information. I gave videos certain edit, as a personal view of the video in the present . The presentation of these two mediums brings out the sarcasm and humor that I want to convey through this project. The reason I use Instagram as a platform to layout these videos is because social media, or a “user-operated medium”, in some ways embodies the social tendency towards ideas of anti-elitism and populist ideology, while also endowing a space for viewers to join the art-making process.
Watching the videos, Sweep the GR code.
When We Are Watching, When We Are Missing
Noncooperation
Video collaborated with music, 6:10 min, sound, 2016
Installation, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_jIbHPLENk&t=47s
Documentation of performance
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I collaborated with musician Carlos Francisco Johns’s experimental music with this art piece. The videos show in different windows people walking in a train station, as I move the lens to imitate viewing habits. The lens will focus on each person a few seconds and then pan away by another person. The filming is process imitates most people’s unconscious wandering online, which jumps between hyperlinks, attracted attention to fresh headlines, and switches focus constantly. This kind of situation which is between consciousness and unconsciousness takes the active or passive role in our daily behavior. When we revisit the time line of life, the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness is often shown as the difference between the results and the process, where the result of one thing must be the process of another thing. So I want to use the unintentional computer or network interface to make an 4 analogy with the logic of the real world. It includes my thinking of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness, the relationship between the results and the process, also the relationship between real society and virtual society. 5 Music in particular holds a capacity for the use of strong narrative and spatial feeling.
6 Video Screenshots
This is an installation work made by two tubular steel chairs designed by Breuer. Those two chairs are placed across from each other with the original intent of expressing meaning of conversation. But the visitor cannot sit down because of the water and grass. Water and grass both stand for nonviolence resistance. This work is a tribute to Gandhi’s “non-violent, non-cooperation” campaign, but also a reflection on the modernism aesthetic with the nature of violence.
Urban Accumulations A Community Library at South Boston Harvard GSD Career Discovery 2016 The characteristics of a library are radically changing nowadays. On one hand, a library turns from an enclosed and quiet space to a more open and lively space. We no longer need huge space for book storage. Instead, a 21st century library should have enough public spaces for information sharing, digital workshop and online reading. On the other hand, we hope that a library can undertake more community services and become the destination of a neighborhood. A good community library is a multi-functional architecture that assumes all kinds of community activities.
Percentage of family households
Inspire Community Activity Through the analysis, the site shows some characteristics: • It is a low income neighborhood mixed with residential and industrial land. • Aside from a playground, there are few community public facilities. • The streetscape is noisy and unsafe due to heavy truck traffic. • The buildings surrounding the site are two to three floor height, which block the view to looking out
Sketch Model 1 Intention of deign: a flexible, enclosed architecture using a stretchable material.
Sketch Model 2 Intention of deign: a semi-closed structure with a central courtyard that can be peeked into through deisgned fenestrations.
Sketch Model 3 Intention of deign: a semi-closed landform structure with a deformable facade.
To deal with those problems, the library needs to: • Contain functions of a community center to satisfy the multiple needs of the community • Improve walking condition and direct trucks to change their route. • Provide more open spaces. • Be more transparent on the upper floors.
The height of surronding buildings and viewing area on each height
Sketch Model 4 Intention of deign: a structure with a rooftop park that directly connects to the streetscape.
Sketch Model 5 Intention of deign: a structure with a central sunken park and tube light wells. The sliding roof becomes a sightseeing platform.
Sketch Model 5 Intention of deign: a structure with a continuous circulation, a central courtyard and a panoramic sightseeing top floor.
• The roof consists of a coherent and gradual ramp that allows visitors to walk or ride a bike.
• The main entrance, the theatre entrance and the rooftop exit are connected by the circulation inside the architecture. • Theatre entrance allows audience to enter the theatre without walking through reading area.
• The slope of roof garden creates viewing platform facing to Boston downtown area.
• The two circulations are shaped by the theatre, also connecting each floor and different zones of the architecture. • One of the circulations allows visitors to walk out to the rooftop garden.
• The major ramp connects the inside and the outside of the architecture • People can watch the performance through the glasses roof
• Ramps delineate the silhouette of the theatre • The ground glass ceiling brings natural light into the theatre
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The slope of roof garden creates a natural seating area, which allows viewers to watch Boston’s skyline. It also can be used as an outdoor theatre.
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• Bring natural light and plants to the basement level • Group reading rooms are designed as sunken seating areas, which allow more flexibility and openness
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The slope connects streets with the roof garden, creating an environmentally friendly and lively community center. The transparency of the gallery allows walkers to see parts of exhibitions.
Social Relationships
Contemporary Architectures
Installation, 2016
Photography, 2014
This installation consists of a video projected onto a green matte acrylic glass and an airbed in front of a blue screen curtain. In the video, a group of dancers are dancing in an art college lobby while pedestrians are either walking pass or observing the performance. An interesting relationship of watching and being watched is formed between dancers and pedestrians in such a scenario. Such a relationship is resonated by the second scene of this installation: the falling lamp, the blue screen, and the airbed. Altogether, the scene is orchestrated to remind one of an unfinished film set. Through such a juxtaposition between intentional performance and unintentional audienceship, I want to evoke a recognition of the blurred boundary between performance and observation in this hyper-mediated society. We are actually all viewers and performers simultaneously on a daily base. The same relationship shows in the two opposing scenes of this installation. The falling lamp, the blue screen, and the airbed constitute of a film-setting like scene, in contrast to the video projection. I would like to lead people to think, in this medium-oriented society, there may not be the difference between the observer and performer, we actually all viewers.
For a long period of time, architectural design is dominated by a predilection to individual aesthetic principles and monumentality. Exemplified by works by star architects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, some architectural structures become huge sculptures and celebrities standing in the city that are worshipped by people. By following such a preference, architectural design sometimes fails to address architecture’s central users, human and human organizations, with adequate sensitivity to the perceptual and relational activities happening inside a structure. As a lover for architecture, I took this series of photographs that demonstrate moments when human body and structure juxtapose and clash into each other to reflect on what I consider to be a problem of architecture and design.
Kissing Floors
From Draw Animation to Designing of A Room Harvard GSD Career Discovery 2016 The project consists of two parts. The first part contests one’s ability of grasping some basic architectural visual languages and analyzing the trajectory of objects. The second part asks one to turn the two dimensional drawing into a three dimensional spatial design that results in a circulatory sequence through a given room and a special experience for that movement.
OBJECT: The Animate Inanimate We were asked to select an inanimate object, draw the plan, section, elevation and animation. The object I chosed is a plier. The interesting thing about a plier is its system in which parts are connected and thus move in a coherent manner. For the animation drawing, the idea is to compactly abstract and demonstrate the most basic movements of a plier. I believe “less is more� in this case. I measured and drew the angles by which each part was triggered to move.
ROOM: The Subject in Space We were asked to translating the change and movement studied of animation drawing into a set of architectural elements that create an alluring space through which to circulate.
Given Dimensioned Room
Plan and Elevation 1
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4 From 2D to 3D, Brainstorming and derivation
Animation
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Periscope Installation, 2015 Inserted between two floors, the installation, also a large periscope, reflects the relationship of height and power. The relatively large scale of the installation invites visitors to stop and watch. Based on how a periscope works, people on the different floors are able to see each other through reflection. The original segregation and insulation of the two floors are broken down by this intervention. Providing such a particular visual angle, the installation embodies an idea, “seeing is a right”. Upon that, the installation is also a metaphor for creating a passageway between classes to allow them to get to know and interact with each other so that class divisions can be cracked with a certain extent of mobility.
I use silk as floors to create a continues and flexible structure. The height of each floor requires visitors to bow while walking or crawling to pass. Because the floors are physically connected to one another, every little move made by one individual will affect others. The transparency allows visitors to see the shadows of others. I hope to create an installation-like space that can provide special experience for visitors to rethink about gravity and relationship between different human beings.
I use magnets to fix the stretchy fabric. The moveable magnets offer flexibility to test different possibilities.
Based on Le Corbusier’s Dom-ino House, this project is an attempt to reimagine an architecture without boundaries, columns and stairs. It is an experiment with structure, materiality as well as spatial qualities. The gradual transition from one level to another allows the space to be experienced as a flow.
Untitled Mixed media installation, 2015 This installation is composed of a Plants in Pot, a pink foam sculpture, wood structure, a white space built by paper, and a projection of video games. I wanted to create a familiar and unfamiliar vision by using colors, shapes, and materials; because those are all familiar elements, which we see in our daily life, but their colors, materials or presenting-mode changes, which is unfamiliar. For example, the deliberate imitation but strange foam Taihu lake stone and fake Chinese ancient building structure; simulate nature “light” and “wind” with electric tonics devices. They all exhibited the unreal side of those objects through imitating. The white space is for visitors to lie down to play video games, which are projected on the ceiling. At this time, the viewing angle is different from the norm. So in this way, visitors give up the freedom of their body. That can also be interpreted as a metaphor for artificial intelligence.
Details
Projection of video game to the ceiling of white cube-Like space
Details in the white cube-like space
Chicken Has Died Installation, 2016 A world, which is built on a chicken’s brain suddenly ended because the chicken died. The core part of the sculpture is a dead chicken, which is inserted in a glass culture bottle with wires connecting the chicken with a USB interface to a laptop. The screen shows “chicken has died” as a result. Chapter four from The Origin of Species printed out and put on the side of the culture bottle. The laptop screen shows the chicken has died as if the chicken brain received its input from a computer. I want to express the query to the world we are live in. Imagine the world is existing in a chicken’s brain, how do we define ourselves? Will we question weather the world is truly physical world or if it is computer program code conversing a current to map on the world of chicken’s brain? I think this reflects the current discussion of artificial intelligence(AI) and virtual reality.
Still Life of Implicitness Photography, 2014 Pop art works reference a lot of daily-use products, no matter painting or sculpture. Products from material world seem to have been given a second identity, some symbolic metaphor. I was very fascinated by this phenomenon; I tried to find the colors, textures and shapes of these objects, which can bring some kind of hint. Like some of the material and color can always inspire people’s sexual fantasies, and some color and structure will brings cold and distant feeling. And certain things can often give a more direct experience; it even can be a particular brand of product, just like Campbell’s soup cans and Coca Cola. I pay attention on the color mix in this group still life when I shot them, including choice of background and shade.