Departure: All Board! An Immersive Exhibition at Station 1907, Shanghai
01st Mar 2024
7 March–30 April 2024 · Station 1907 Qidian, Shanghai
Departure: All Board! brought Jacky Tsai’s art train, sculpture and immersive moving images together in Shanghai. Presented with Hongkong Land at Station 1907 Qidian, the exhibition invited visitors to encounter his visual worlds as a journey through physical objects, architectural space and animated scenes.
Moving images surround visitors at Station 1907 Qidian.
A Train as a Moving Canvas
The art train developed from Tsai’s collaboration with the Eastern & Oriental Express became a focal point of the presentation. Its long, painted surfaces brought the rhythm of travel into the exhibition, connecting a public artwork designed to move through a landscape with the experience of entering an imagined world.
Images Unfold Through Time
The approximately thirteen-minute immersive work Swinging Time revisited nearly two decades of Tsai’s practice. Beginning with the whistle of a train, animated narratives transformed his densely layered imagery into a surrounding experience of colour, movement and sound. Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jay Chou accompanied the journey, adding another dimension to the painted world.
Physical installations and digital imagery formed two connected parts of the exhibition.
Memory, Sculpture and Place
Four sculptural installations introduced a more tangible counterpoint to the digital presentation. Drawing on childhood memories and Tsai’s experience of living between cultures, they placed questions of identity and belonging within a playful visual environment. Across the exhibition, the movement between sculpture and projection allowed familiar motifs to be encountered at different scales and speeds.
Departure at Station 1907 Qidian, Shanghai, 2024.Installation view, Shanghai, 2024.
