B09K
Lunar Practices
Changsha, China
2025 #4
Ian Whittlesea
27 April - 25 May
Imagine this is a moon land. It follows the lunar calendar and every new moon an artist, poet or designer will come to this land. Every day at sunset (China UTC+8) this land will be lit up as the moon.
Stand still. Be quiet.
The text functions as both instruction and permission to the passerby. A chance to pause and consider something very basic...
As with a parent’s directions to a child the statement can be felt as unwanted and authoritarian or as a gentle encouragement to a better way. The simplicity of the text’s suggestion holds an implicit critique of the inattention of the everyday, and yet could also be a description of contemporary life, when so much of our time is spent in silent attention to the screen.
Ian Whittlesea’s work explores the relationships between language, light, image and diagram both on the page and in the world. It is driven by a renegotiation of modernist and esoteric histories, particularly those which suggest that revelation comes from control of breath and body. From devoting five years to become a black belt in judo in order to better understand Yves Klein’s practice to exploring the Mazdaznan exercises that Johannes Itten taught at the Bauhaus he has consistently attempted to elucidate Sol LeWitt’s statement: Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.