Shuai Yang

At-hand is a series of monoprints, with the title borrowed partially from Marten Heidegger’s terminology “present-at-hand,” a concept that the philosopher established alongside equipment’s “ready-to-hand” status. Present-at-hand describes the moments when equipment becomes disabled to fulfill its original functions and, therefore, removed from its network of meaning. When the artist takes a ruler as a printing plate, she decontextualizes this object from its original position as a measuring tool, simultaneously replacing the traditional role of a printing matrix. 

This chain of recontextualization of material brought to front some curious phenomena. The meaning of a ruler becomes fluid; the hidden matrix in the traditional printing process (i.e., the plate) melds into the image; the role of the artist transforms into someone who, instead of creating new spectacles, opens up access to possibilities of how an object can exist beyond their utility values. All three attempts carry the artist’s intention to question the subject-object relationship, and in this exploration, both the artist and the ruler resist their pre-constructed positions in man-made systems.