PublicArt Works assisted Beijing artist Xia Hang in Sculpture by The Sea 2017. The massive 2 tonne sculpture comprising over 3000 pieces of stainless steel, was gently manoeuvred by crane into its resting place next to the Bondi Icebergs for the duration of the exhibition.
“Rangerer” is a cyborg dragonfly, thankfully too heavy to take off. Influenced by on- line games, the cyborg-like mosquito has a deeper warning, making real how robotic weaponry might actually work. Xia Hang, has never let go of his boyish sense of play, of imaginatively disassembling and re-assembling things such as insects, plants and machines. He believes that his sculptures should be considered like toys. Assembling toys has been a life-long hobby and his mechanical like precision lends itself to the medium of stainless steel. His creatures warn of the world’s dangerous amassing of weapons, their proliferation and our weakness in the face of it.
This artwork, along with two smaller sculptures “Contract”and “Sleep Walker” exhibited for Sculpture Inside, are still for sale: http://sculpturebythesea.com/info/sales/
Artist’s Bio:
Xia Hang was born in 1978 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China. He started painting when he was just 10 years old and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts before going on to do a Master of Fine Arts within the sculpture department of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, completed in 2002.
He has exhibited extensively in China, as well as Art Basel Miami (2009), Singapore, Moscow, ART Taipei 2009, ART Singapore 2008. He has had four solo shows including one at Gallery M.A.D. in Dubai, with two works in this series acquired by White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney. He was commissioned in 2014 by the Swiss watch maker Maximilian Busser to make a limited edition of exclusive watches featuring a miniature of his sculpture on the watch face. His engagement with the mechanics of watches then started a whole new series of machine based work. One is the current commission for a large public artwork in in Ultimo Sydney, based on the industrial history of the locality, which is due for completion in 2019.