Amiko Li: Tender Giants
Fuller Rosen Gallery
319 N 11th St. Unit 3
Philadelphia
Nov. 17, 2024
A gorilla touches its reflection in a zoo enclosure’s tempered window. A male model poses as if about to punch the camera, but his fists are obscured by finger puppets. A bikini-clad girl shrugging the cold off her shoulders looks like a punctuation mark in the middle of a shallow ocean.
Each of those photos, taken by Shanghai- and Brooklyn-based artist Amiko Li, is worth at least a thousand words. Seen together, they tell the story of romance gone wrong: Alienation, distorted attraction, self-reflexivity are all put on display.
Rather than let his photographs speak for themselves, Li has curated his artwork into a loaded look at love and capitalist interest for Philly’s Fuller Rosen art gallery.
Li opts out of the easy tradition of hanging images on walls. Instead he has built a bed with heart-patterned sheets for viewers to lie in while watching the photos play out slide-deck style in a 20-minute loop. A poem by the artist offers a secondary storyline about lost love, tethered to the artwork through slow-moving subtitles.
In some ways, the installation allows for an intriguing look into dating app culture. The most powerful shots — such as the scenes described above — are situated amid blurry ones; the flow of theme is both disrupted and underscored by a slew of bleary florals that obscure their subjects with bloom. Sometimes the projector turns to total blackness, and we have to wait patiently for the next vision to show itself.
As Li writes in his artist statement, “locating potential lovers” on Hinge, Tinder or Grindr is like “the speed of a lens shutter flashing like strikes on a matchbox; heating up and burning out into black. Flash and scroll — the actions of affection become inverted performance and empty gestures when channeled through a camera.”
The series shows the human realness that exists beyond a swipe left or right. Opposites attract, in love with the illusions they see on their own screens, and the rest is turmoil: Between the moments of beautiful fantasy are shadows, changing landscapes and lots of loss, spelled out photographically through moments of darkness between the revelry of light.
At the same time, Li’s multimedia arrangement walks the tightrope between a visual illustration of this reality and a critique of “an era where attachment is commodified on a global scale through intimacy capitalism via social media.”
The antidote to shitty attention spans is, unfortunately, not the slide deck. The projector erases some of the natural saturation of Li’s photos, reducing their impact. The side-by-side poem, which ostensibly seeks to tie the wide-range of images together, is also a distraction — though I will say some gorgeous lines stand out on their own terms, like “You are like a needle in my clock; but now you are here, a breathing body.” The laggy pacing undermines generative reaction from viewers.
There’s too much going on. It becomes hard to focus on the message — which seems to be that an image on its own is not enough.
But you can say the same thing for dating. A filtered photo of a stranger online will never give us the full picture. That’s not the point; the photo does the hard work of reinvigorating us with interest in inventing our own life stories. The mirage may lie to our faces, but it can also force us to face harsh realities. Just like great art.
After my date with Amiko Li’s exhibit, I’d like to see it again — but not to jump under the sheets. I’d prefer a leisurely walk around a well-lit gallery. The walls can stay up so long as I like the artwork hanging on them.
Amiko Li's Tender Giants remains on view through Dec. 8 at Fuller Rosen Gallery.
