Cai Lei
b. 1983, China
Unfinished home, 2016
Cement
58.5 x 97.5 x 3 cm
Unfinished Home is part of Cai Lei’s earliest series of works of the same name, comprising concrete hallways of various dimensions and pathways that simultaneously protrude and recede depending on the viewer’s position in relation to the work.
The utilisation of architectural cement brings to focus the flatness of its two-dimensional foundation, which Cai Lei has expressed to be profoundly more important to him than space and volume. This juxtaposition between the two and three dimensional creates a unique tension within the viewer’s experienced reality, its effect further heightened by Cai Lei’s deliberate usage of light to create an illusion of depth.
Cai Lei (b. 1983, China)
Cai Lei is a Chinese artist who explores the relationship between illusion and space, facilitated through various mediums including paintings, mixed media sculptural reliefs and installations. Rooted in his interest in planarity, the illusory conceptual spaces he carves fluctuate between the second and third dimension, using the flatness of the two- dimensional plane as the foundation to manipulate the viewer’s visual interpretation.
Cai Lei graduated with a Masters in Sculpture at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, and his works have been exhibited internationally including at the Tang Contemporary Art, Korea (2022), Nanhai Qiandeng Lake Park, China (2020), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Bonn, Germany (2015).
