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Treatise on Ancient Design

2018

Installation view, Magazzino, Rome, 2018

Yan Xing was greatly impressed by architect Zlatko Ugljen's use of space, color, and materials in Šerefudin's White Mosque (1980) in Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This inspiration led Yan Xing to conduct research on modern graphic design in North Africa and Southern Europe. Through comparing various graphic reference models, he created an isolated aesthetic and political trajectory that does not entirely align with the post-war political context.

As an example of where such an investigation may lead, Yan Xing subsequently recreated the interior design scheme of Paul Troost's Nazi-era Haus der Kunst (1937) in Munich in the space of Magazzino in Rome, using locally-sourced Roman marble as his building material. The walls were adorned with graphic design and hand-drawn works created by the artist, tracing the evolution of imperial and modernist styles during wartime, along with a collected classic Italian lamp from the 1930s.

This artwork deconstructs and reassembles political images and regional identities within modernity, design paradigms, and spatial theory.

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