Artificial Moon, Wang Yuyang, "The Section of Experimental Art at the 13th National Art Exhibition"

Installed as a huge, bright moon in the sky, the viewer feels like enjoying the natural spectacle in a modern cultural space. At first sight as a poetic work, however, the statistics of electricity consumed by 10,000 bulbs reminds the viewers of the irony to the bulb’s name, “Eco-energy.” The artificial moon is re-interpreted as human’s challenge to the natural light, which reveals human being’s desire along within the process of the civilization. “To reach the height of the sky,” “Human beings wins over the nature with no doubts,” slogans as these are all around, and the relationship between nature and human beings has been broken by our egotism. The popular “Never Sleep Cities” everywhere are just evidence of such desires and challenges of human beings to nature.
As the moon will never falls down into the mundane world, and therefore, the artificial moon can only be a materialistic manifestation of human’s delusional egotism. Bathing in the white, cold lights of the artificial moon, we actually become nostalgic for the natural moon, as the ancient poem reads, “the moon is brighter in our hometown.” However, “where is our hometown?” is the question we have when leaving the space of the artificial moon.