Refrigerator Illusion

Jun YANG

〈The Emperor of China’s Ice/ An Artist who Buried 1000kg of Ice in the Ground〉, 2019.

Mixed media, Children’s book, wood construction, video, Dimensions variable, Photo courtesy of Austrian Sculpture Park

When YANG was invited to contribute to the Austrian Sculpture Park with a new art work, he decided to create an ephemeral project in reaction to the classical notion of sculpture as objects that are meant to last “forever.”
YANG was interested in the myth according to which, in ancient China, ice blocks were buried in the winter months and then served as ice cream in summer, a dish that is known in Chinese as “baobing” (刨冰) and “tsuabing” (礤冰), and in Japan as “kakigori” (かき氷). At the end of November in 2018, a 1 m3 block of ice was buried in an embankment in the Austrian Sculpture Park. At the Sculpture Park’s spring celebration on May 19 in 2019, the ice was excavated again. This sculpture project was repeated in 2020 by the art center Villa Merkel in Germany.
Instead of publishing a catalogue, YANG decided to make a children’s book to accompany the project. He invited the Japanese children’s book illustrator Yuuki Nishimura to work with him to create the images. In addition to The Emperor of China’s Ice, YANG created a second story to retell the process of his contribution to the sculpture park and why he decided to write a children’s book.