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If you’ve ever been to a figure drawing class or sat for an artist, you’ll know how challenging it can be to hold a pose for several minutes. Now imagine holding that pose for several hours while seemingly floating in mid-air. In his exhibition called In Just a Blink of an Eye, artist Xu Zhen brought this surreal image to life, with a group of performers appearing to defy gravity, frozen in time and space.
The installation was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles in the summer of 2019. The work explored the limits of the human body while challenging the viewer’s sense of reality. Working across a wide range of media, Zhen often uses humor, irony, and clever illusions to play with our perceptions—and this performance was no different.
Although Zhen hasn’t revealed the exact mechanics behind his work, In Just a Blink of an Eye used hidden supports built into the performers’ clothing to create the illusion that their bodies were floating in mid-air. The performers held carefully engineered poses, appearing frozen mid-fall, for around six hours each day during the exhibition. Even with the hidden supports, holding these poses for hours must have taken a lot of patience and mental strength, too.
Find out more about In Just a Blink of an Eye in the video below.
Xu Zhen’s 2019 exhibition, In Just a Blink of an Eye, featured a group of live performers appearing to defy gravity, frozen in time and space.
Source: Amanda Hunt on Xu Zhen: In Just a Blink of an Eye
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