Legend of the White Snake

Jason S. Yi merges Western European and Asian landscape traditions in his paintings, sculpture, video and drawing. Yi applies his architectural training to his works, acutely attuned to the differences between the scale of nature and that of human constructions. In his most recent sculptures, Yi uses the most fake-looking materials—plastic, metallic tape—to create his works, or to shroud common objects like chairs to create his precarious, if regal, landscape sculptures, trapped between floor and ceiling, earth and sky. Yi acknowledges the long human tradition of romanticizing the landscape while exploiting its products.

The Legend of the White Snake is an ancient Chinese folk tale dating to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 C.E.). The White Snake yearned to join human society so she took the form of a woman and married a scholar. Because snakes are considered evil in Chinese culture, a monk imprisoned Madam Snake—it is her cage that Yi evokes in his tangled construction. While Yi’s work refers to an ancient story, when circling the form, however, the sinuous white PVC pipe also resembles Jackson Pollock’s “overall” skeins of paint, that were thrown onto canvases laid on the ground, inspired by traditional Navajo sand paintings.

Yi chose the Legend of the White Snake after his first trip to China, and in recognition of how the story permuted over centuries as it spread from China to other countries in East Asia. Like history, the myth changes according to who is telling the story. Yi creates a densely packed screen of pipe, avoiding any artistic emphasis that would privilege one portion of the construction over another. In his tangled web of extruded plastic, Yi highlights the tension between our imaginary landscapes and the reality of the worlds we have created.