Sun Yuan & Peng Yu

  • Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
  • Title: Can’t Help Myself
  • Description: In this work commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu employ an industrial robot made with stainless steel and rubber enclosed in a glass case. On the floor behind the clear acrylic walls, there is a pool of a crimson-colored-colored liquid. The robot, which consists of a flat base that is fixed to the floor and a long, crane-like arm, and when the sensors detect that the liquid has strayed too far away it repeatedly bends over in order to sweep up the liquid with the brush attached to its head. Every time, just as the robot successfully gathers the liquid towards itself, it oozes away and slides down the floor, and the task begins over again.
  • Date: 2016
  • Dimensions: Dimensions Variable Overall
  • Medium:  Kuka industrial robot, stainless steel and rubber, cellulose ether in colored water, lighting grid with Cognex visual-recognition sensors, and polycarbonate wall with aluminum frame
  • Institutional Accreditation: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection

  • Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
  • Title: Dear
  • Description: This work consists of a white silicon chair in a large plexiglass box, fit with a rubber hose that violently whips around. The chair is kept company by a rubber hose that violently whips around the surrounding space. In between these periodic eruptions of violence, the chair sits inert again, almost invitingly serene- until the violent whips begins once again.
  • Date: May 10th, 2019
  • Dimensions: 300 x 300 x 300cm
  • Medium: Air pump, air tank, hose, sofa
  • Institutional Accreditation: 58th International Art Exhibition, “May You Live in Interesting Times,” La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale.