Shuai Yang

As an instruction to the method of using herself as the measurement, How Much Is It No.1 employs three elements from the procedure of measurement: the measured existence, the measuring instrument, and the measurand (the result of measurement represented by Arabic numbers, imperial, and converted metric units here). It is made with a giveaway museum frame, allowing her to base the artistic mediation on the existing dimensions. Yang indicated the width of the framed image ground with a pencil line labeled “27 11/16 inches” and “70.32625 centimeters”, results gained from measuring with a wooden ruler bought in a convenience store. She then fixed the ruler underneath the measurand and drew a diagram at the bottom of the page displaying her body becoming the origin of a measuring unit.

How Much Is It No.2 emphasizes the act of measuring by attaching a bought metal ruler to the drawing. A second line reminds free and allows any potential way of encounterment. It is through a system of methods that we access phenomena of some sort, and these phenomena then become our knowledge of the world. The measurement system operates in this manner. The question is: does it disclose the truth or solely manifest the system itself to us?

How Much Is It No.3 exposes the basic system of length measurement by deconstructing the material and form of a ruler. The incompleteness of its text, numbers, gradation marks, and the wooden body unsettles the rigidity of this man-made instrument — both as a practical tool and as a means of knowledge production. Through four iterations of the same ruler, culminating in a non-object, the work drifts the idea of measurement beyond fixed representation.

Through How Much Is It No. 4 and No. 5, the rulers are deconstructed at each inch mark. The fragments are arranged in a composition where the intervals themselves also measure one inch, thereby questioning what measurement really means.

How Much Is It No.7 points at the unattainable nature of the signified. Once translated into material reality, measurement as a concept becomes impossible to grasp. Every attempt to reach the precise measurement has fallen - in the case of this work, the temptations were processed by cutting at the ruler’s inch marks and cutting to the matboard at one-inch intervals. Material nature impedes the manifestation of the perfect truth. Like language, measurement is a system of signifiers that point to but can never reach its signified.

How Much Is It No.8 prompts a physical condition in which the first inch of a ruler is to be decided by the viewer. The tiny wooden piece that was “before-zero” is placed on the raised edge, creating a situation in which the measurement of the first inch changes according to the viewer’s position, eventually disrupting the two-dimensionality of the perception of length.

How Much Is It No.9 plays around the idea of a ruler as a representation of measurement by juxtaposing the physical ruler and its image in such a way that they measure each other.