In “of,” Brooklyn-based artist Craig Jun Li assembles a world of shifting references where the image and its physical counterpart intermingle, unraveling familiar structures of recognition and meaning. This exhibition at RAINRAIN, on view from September 13–October 26, 2024, offers a speculative investigation into the fragility of understanding, realized through a play of misrecognition and tactile curiosity. Each sculptural and printed piece operates less as a concrete object and more as a probing into how we process images, materials, and the in-between state where perception falls short.

We are traversing a fragmented narrative, layered with Li’s found objects, printed materials, and ghostly recreations as they take on invasive three-dimensional and sensorial forms. With each stretch and fragment they fuse together, the truth of the subject becomes distorted by the frame that allows each piece to function. The mode of display is now front and center. Minimalist stands evoke hybrid images, their presence echoing everything from street market displays in Chinatown to the spare installations of post-minimalism, blurring lines of categorization even further. We are now positioned in an eerie liminal space between the aesthetic and the anthropological.

“of“ exists is the ephemeral gap between the image and its origins, interrogating how historical constructs of knowledge itself are made slippery and fragmentary. The neutrality and truth we often feel are implied in photographs and archives become uncertain. Through Li’s handling of these perishable materials, these objects transcend the historical narratives and their real-world counterparts, inviting the viewer into a space where our perceptions shift, forcing a “second look.”

Walking through the space, Li plays with a variety of media that defy immediate interpretation, crossing boundaries between two- and three-dimensional, fact and perception. The assumption that we ‘know’ what an object is, how the narrative is unfolding, and even the historical accuracy of their context are called into question. Placed together, pieces from Li’s “pic” series are carefully color coordinated and paired with pieces from his “unknown” and “pm” series, as if we are combing through some obscure system of classification. While the works from “unknown” and “pm” present a more fixed, archival presence with their film and painted silicone, they are harshly juxtaposed by the kinetic nature of “pic”. Layered with mesh over aluminum stretcher bars, images of everyday life in Li’s Tribeca apartment overlaid with images from the gardens of Northern China Li left behind, now move, bend, and contort as wooden clubs push and pull from behind the surface of the artwork. The act of documenting and truly knowing a place becomes fluid, complex, and even ghostly as we enter into Li’s personal act of remembrance.

Moving away from the gallery walls, we encounter “work”, a piece Li created with contributions from Clare Hu, that invades our physical space as its two displays stretch across the gallery floor. Artifacts, ruins, or the foundations of what once was conjure recollections of a marketplace, an archive, or even gothic architecture, as the seemingly defunct wooden frame is home to groups of various objects. From printed newspapers to scientific slides of condensation patterns being created in real time, the detached nature of data collection, interpretation, and analysis is disoriented. Entranced by the infinite changes around each new corner of the piece, we as viewers cannot help but reconsider the relationship and production of ‘fact’ that happens between subject, image, and production in our contemporary society.

Li’s presentation of works defies the static presentation often expected of gallery installations. Each piece feels animate, fluctuating between the recognizable and the unfamiliar, moving us through a field of interpretations that seems to drift as we navigate the space. Li’s manipulation of forms and frames destabilizes the ways we traditionally relate to objects. With a sense of play and discovery in the face of inevitable misrecognition, we leave behind the quest for the subject and are now stumbling amidst the framework of the systems of understanding themselves. We are left, ultimately, with a lingering sense of unfulfilled comprehension, yet perhaps more attuned to the delicate strands of cognition that link objects, images, and ourselves.

Review by Shannon Permenter Image Credit: Courtesy of RAINRAIN, New York Photos documentation by Marc Tatti, and Craig Jun Li

Exhibition is currently on view at https://www.rainraingallery.com

Shannon Permenter is a freelance writer and art historian based in Arizona. After completing her Masters in History & Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute she has channeled her passion for the arts into a career helping artists, curators, and nonprofits share their work with the world.

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October 17, 2024Art News, New York