Growing up in a humid coastal city in China, Wei is interested in ways to sense the ever-transforming yet ever-present water molecules. Hydrometer: in transition and translation is an attempt to measure the invisible atmosphere created in the gallery, controlled both by the gallery and by people who move through the space, through the materiality of sugar. Casted sugar triangle documents the reduction of volume. A cube suspended from a hanging scale records the decrease in sugar mass. Calipers measure the loss in diameter of a hollow sugar sphere perched atop a glass cylinder.
Mirrors placed underneath the geometric sugar forms translate the sculptures from three dimensions to two-dimensional maps. The mechanism also acts as an observational tool that projects sugar's melting patterns onto the walls. The viewer is being asked to actively shift one's perceptions of space and depth.
Hydrometer: in transition and translation
2018
