C-LAB, Taipei, 2019:

The series Real Mass Entrepreneurship continues Simon Denny’s signature of visual expression that amalgamates information technology and graphic history. Through investigating Shenzhen’s technology scene, the artist reflects on the new urban cultural landscape produced by the technology industry. This video installation was created when the artist was preparing his solo exhibition in Shenzhen. He found a type of standardized glass counter in Huaqiangbei Electronic Market, and used it as a criterion to select other disused counters for duplication. He then airbrushed and remodeled these replicas and highlighted their diversity in lighting, signage, arrangement, formal elements and product features. These three-dimensional sculptural replicas ranging from electronic component cases without lighting, to highly standardized and common signs, to product display counters used by “makers” in Huaqiangbei respond to the duo innovative waves in China – mass entrepreneurship and maker movement. Taking the belief upheld by people in Shenzhen – “technology accelerates social development” – as its point of departure, the work delineates the characteristics of production and consumption in the modern network of globalization – mass reproduction and subrogation of individuals are like products created out of production lines, waiting to be chosen in display cases.