Introduction
Drawing from folklore and films of his childhood, Tao Hui creates immersive video-installations bending boundaries of fiction and reality.
From August 2015,the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) present New Directions: Tao Hui, a solo exhibition composed of three works, new and existing, that through narrative structure and performance take viewers on an emotionally charged journey to an otherworldly realm.
Filmed in an abandoned building The Acting Tutorial convenes a troupe of amateur actors in the rehearsal of extreme scenarios—a violent break up, a house fire, intense labor pain. Under the teacher’s cool direction, their howls and hysteria are a cathartic exercise reminiscent of the Moreno school of psychotherapy. As the narrative continues, imaginative limits are breached and a brutal reality is exposed as the actors viciously burn a fallen comrade. Here Tao Hui uses a low budget means to achieve the effect, drawing attention to the scene’s artifice.