Barricades, "Big Tail Elephants working Group" (excerpt)

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Hou Hanru

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……In the first "Big Tail Elephants" exhibition in 1991, Lin Yilin produced "Standard Residences Series", allegorically exposing this increasingly standardized world. He used iron bars, bricks and other materials found in a construction site to build a series of standard "residences". The rough and naked brick wall and iron structures intrude into the gentle space of art like strange and terrifying monsters. This work provocatively exposes the oppression and alienation caused by the increasing standardization of everyday life.

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Lin Yilin has developed a vocabulary based on these brick walls to question and negotiate the relationship between humans and the built environment. His work emphasizes the particular texture of the material and the "amazement" caused by the individual's direct engagement with this material in the process of construction. This work brings us to critically reappraise the rapidly changing environment and, eventually, to question society's commonly held ideas and values. In a series of installations and performances, he creates astonishing combinations of brick walls, water, money, massage machines and the human body he aims to "add motion to the original form. Any eternal concept related to walls and bricks no longer exist. The work becomes a 'living object', a new substance appealing to our visual sense."

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