Sun Xun’s Time Spy is currently being exhibited in the Saint Louis Art Museum from February 16 through October 21, 2018. It was previously commissioned by Audemars Piguet before it debuted at Miami’s Art Basel in 2016 and was subsequently exhibited on the billboards of New York’s Time Square where passerby’s were able to view it at midnight for the entire month of June in 2017.[i]&[ii] Time Spy is a nine minute animation film made from scanned woodblocks and the film explores notions of past, present, and future as a way to explore the nature of time and how we perceive it. Each second of the animation contains about sixteen carved woodblocks while the entire animation consists of approximately 10,000 woodblocks.[i] The film is in 3D and requires traditional blue and red paper glasses. What is unique about Sun Xun’s aesthetic is the way he transforms an ancient traditional Chinese medium by weaving it into the fabric of contemporary art. In doing so, he explores and challenges not just the history from which it originated but also how it relates to the present moment as well as the future.

The exhibitions in the museum are organized by artistic styles and time periods. Upon entering, the left side is dedicated to modern and contemporary art whereas the right side has classical and ancient works of art. The gallery holding Sun Xun’s Time Spy exhibition is on the right in between a series of galleries which are displaying classical works of art. On the outskirts of the galleries, there are several large vitrines holding a variety of works including ancient Korean and Chinese pottery. What is interesting about the placement of this exhibition is that it seems to acknowledge the historical significance of Sun Xun’s medium although it is being used in a contemporary context. Inside the gallery, before entering the cinematic room where the film automatically replays, are samples hanging on the walls of the woodblocks used to create the animation. It took hundreds of Chinese art students under the direction of Sun Xun to complete the entire film and when examining the details carefully, the arduous labor that went into making this animation becomes apparent.[ii]

Throughout the film there are references to different artistic works of art such as the famous waves by Japanese print maker Hokusai as well as a French film titled A Trip The Moon.[iii] Each scene from the animation flows in a dreamlike fashion from bizarre landscapes to morphed objects and hybrid animals. The fantastical landscapes in combination with seemingly disparate objects contribute to a semiotic aesthetic reminiscent of surrealism. There are violins with wings, animals whose heads are replaced by machine-like objects and landscapes which change from scenes of everyday life to floating in space surrounded by planets. There are glimpses of old Chinese newspapers in the background and in his previous animations, Sun has drawn on old 1950s newspapers from the Cultural Revolution.[ii] He mentions that he reads these old newspapers every day to inspire his thought process when in search for ideas and that the incorporation of these newspapers is a reference to time, history, life and power.[ii] Many of the perspectives in the animation give the impression that the viewer is part of the actual scene. For example, there was a scene which depicted a silhouette of an eye but the viewer is looking from inside out as planets and constellations pass by. It appears Sun Xun is trying to speak to the viewer in order to challenge them to push the boundaries of their own awareness of time and space, in other words, becoming a spy of oneself. 

“You cannot touch yesterday, you cannot touch tomorrow, just a moment right now. It’s now. So no future and no past, you always live in this time. So the “spy” means you can’t go back and you can’t go to the future. Who is the spy? So in your time where then, you are spy of yourself.”[iv]

Sun Xun currently lives in Beijing and was born in 1980 in Fuxin, Liaoning Province right after the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.[ii] His father was a factory worker and when Sun decided to pursue art, his father supported him because he wanted Sun to stay away from politics for the reason that his family has an extensive military background.[ii] Sun graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts where he studied printmaking. During his studies he became interested in film; however, because he could not afford or borrow a camera, he began to look for alternative options and instead used his experience in drawing to create an animated film.[ii] According Sun, he did not know at the time that his film was considered animation; however, he believes his work is not really animation because the aesthetic in comparison is not the same.[ii] His drawings eventually led him to incorporate carved woodblocks which is a medium that historically spans as early as eighteenth century Japan.[v] The aftermath of the Cultural Revolution influences much of the themes in his work for the reason that, as a child, he received conflicting views of the event. In an interview he mentions that he always accepted two versions of history, one view came from the school books and the other was his father’s account of what occured. Consequently, this has led him to challenge Chinese and world history in an attempt to reconcile these conflicting views.[ii]

Time Spy is Sun Xun’s first 3D animation film and what makes his work significant is that he was able to find a middle point in new and old Chinese society by converging an ancient traditional medium with modern technology.[i] After meticulously carving the hand drawn woodblocks, he paints them in black ink and instead of making a print, he lets the ink dry and scans them. The process in and of itself is innovating. He’s bringing his own traditions and placing a piece of ancient history into our contemporary technological world. Besides the incorporation of modern technology, Sun Xun travels and uses different cultures to address their current political situations in his work while simultaneously juxtapositioning narratives of his own culture. The narrative theme of Time Spy is about exploring oneself in the present moment but there are many references to different cultures as well as Chinese history in the work. Furthermore, the mixture of different cultures is a resurfacing theme in his work and in an interview, Sun Xun states that he is “a citizen of the world and not just a Chinese artist.”[ii] Sun is not interested in associating himself to a nationality because he believes “the name of a country is too limited” and states that “artist is artist. The name China is only political.”[ii] In an interview, Sun states, “traveling is very important for my art because only by traveling will you know what you have and what kind of things you have never owned. My art is about how I can develop the world’s view because artists are not working for the present. Artist work for the future. And art will not be art anymore in the future. It will become part of culture.”[ii]

When looking at the trajectory of Sun Xun’s work, it becomes apparent that Time Spy is the product of his own evolution and growth as an artist. He started off with traditional ink paintings and his insatiable curiosity led him to animation. He’s constantly pushing the boundaries of his work and taking his ideas to the next level. Moreover, his work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences as a child and his attempt at reconciling conflicting accounts of what happened during the Cultural Revolution set forth the foundation for his persistent questioning and skepticism of the way history is written in comparison to what really happened. In an interview with Bloomberg he mentions, “the piece of work is not art, the film is not art, art is about a deeper spirit.”[ii] His work not only traverses the boundaries of countries and politics but it also encourages us to question these very boundaries and how they affect us and the history which we know. Unlike his other works such as The Time Vivarium where he questions the history presented at the American Museum of Natural History, Time Spy is not about changing the past or the future but focusing on the present and becoming aware within ourselves to our perceptions of time and what it means to us.

“Right now we live in the river and tomorrow the river will be gone and what you should do right now is to make your own story. Or instead of a story, a question. A system of questioning reveals a parallel world. This is my art.”[ii]

[i] http://www.slam.org/exhibitions/timespy.php

[ii] Sun Xun: One of China's Most Ambitious Young Artists | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 46  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDcNftMKqQM&index=1&list=PLbZOxhJsiaAqWUcqxNRjT1JtmZbuvr1mX

[iii] SLAM’s “Sun Xun: Time Spy” Combines 3D Animation with an Ancient Art | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZtHayVAzKE&pbjreload=10

[iv] July 2017 Midnight Moment: "Time Spy" by Sun Xun| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFv0vtcvxEA

[v] Woodblock Prints in the Ukiyo-e Style | https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ukiy/hd_ukiy.htm