Rusty memory
Brook Yanlin pursues a sense of personal independence while placing himself within the crowd, where reality and fantasy continually collide. His works carry nostalgic, slightly melancholic, and sensitive emotions. Within the atmosphere he creates, a quiet sense of helplessness emerges, revealing a deeper questioning of memory.
Against the background of an era shaped by the pandemic, his work invites viewers to reconsider their own position, direction, and relationship to reality.
In 2021, Yanlin first received attention with the series Egoist Fantasy. His later series explored themes ranging from war and social criticism to Far Away, each rooted in his personal experiences and reflections.
The exhibition Rusty Memory focused exclusively on Yanlin’s early conceptual exploration of self-memory, without including other easel paintings. At the beginning of his practice, Yanlin did not create works as planned series. Instead, he worked from feeling, and only later looked back to organize and understand the works he had made.
“I create when I feel something. When I no longer feel it, I fall into a kind of depression. After that depression, I begin to summarize my past works,” he said.
Yanlin is first and foremost an artist whose thinking is rooted in painting. He often works with uncontrollable factors, allowing chance, material reaction, and accident to enter the process of creation. Although loneliness and alienation appear throughout his images, what matters most in his method is a certain openness to randomness.
He has always tried to move away from traditional constraints and follow his own path. Looking closely at these images and installations, one can see how carefully he examines the relationship between himself and his subjects.
Yanlin’s video work Rusty Tree was created after a year-long silence. During that time, he repeatedly returned to the same questions: Why did I create those works? What was the meaning of my previous actions?
In this exhibition, his reflection on self-memory gradually unfolds through photography, installation, video, and easel painting.
