Obsessions, 2019, single channel 4K video (color, sound), 20'31"
In his video work Obsessions, the artist Wang Tuo is inspired by a mysterious missing person case. He hopes to use this piece to generate discussions about desire, obsessions, architectural aesthetics, and Otaku culture, against the backdrop of the Internet age. The monologue in the artwork reveals the process in which an architect is gradually hypnotized by a therapist, who tries to make his patient imagine himself as a piece of architecture. As the therapist enters this structure from the outside, exploring its inner structure, he thereby gains access into his patient's inner world. In the meantime, the therapist also discovers a "secret chamber" hidden away in this piece of architecture, which is essentially the patient's subconscious. The video presents the audience with an opportunity to thoroughly explore the "Beijing Fusuijing Building", a structure built in the 1950s as an embodiment of socialist ideals. Today, however, it lies half-abandoned. This piece of architecture bears tremendous symbolic significance, as it is reminiscent of the ''Big Dumb Objects" often seen in the writing of British science fiction writer Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, denoting something huge that is right in front of us but that we can not communicate with. Here, the artist attempts to use the spatial structure of architecture to imitate the structure of our subconscious, which is oftentimes obscure and indiscernible. Lastly, the artist also brings forth the idea of a "failed structure".