Karma Ltd. Extended Chapter #4: Post-Internet Mythologies

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Within the smoke of the fog machines, divine iconography meets throbbing beats. Strobe light encounters naked skin. Buddhist cosmology meets the codes of the global internet culture. The boundary-breaking works likewise reminiscent of drug-fueled reverie in an underground club as it is of a yoga retreat in India’s Varanasi.
 
The overlapping aesthetics of Tianzhuo Chen’s theatre performances, video installations and sculptures are infused with the iconographic vocabulary of divinities, ceremonies, and rituals of a variety of cultures. Blending, among others, references to Japanese theater and dance forms such as butoh and kabuki, but also to the sounds, symbols, and hedonism of a global youth culture. Tianzhuo Chen creates experiential spaces that are as sensual as they are grotesque. They seem to be free of the social, political, cultural, and religious structures and borders of the era. Stereotypical imagery is taken in hand in order to break it open, dissect it and put it back together. Within this Post Internet intoxication, a campy bricolage reveals a globally inspired self-portrait between commerce, kitsch, spirituality and the apocalypse.
 
In the course of Chapter #4, Karma Ltd. Extended in cooperation with Torstraßen Festival invited Tianzhuo Chen together with his performers Beio and China Yu to take over ACUD Galerie for three days. Alongside chosen video works on display, Tianzhuo Chen is going to develop a site-specific and newly commissioned durational performance piece.