NARRATOR:

Galaxy was made by Ni Youyu between 2008 and 2011. Its size is adaptable to fit the display space. In the 2025 exhibition M+ Sigg Collection: Inner Worlds, it is shown in a corner of the gallery. The installation features hand-painted coins paired with a single-channel digital video. The coins measure between two and three centimetres in diameter, and the video runs for around twelve minutes with sound and colour.

Displayed on black walls, these 300 silver or brass-coloured coins look like stars in a galaxy from a distance. To the right, a screen shows a documentary about how the work was made. Here, you will see close-up shots of the artist flattening coins from various countries with a hammer on outdoor stairs. This process removes their engravings and monetary value, reducing them to tiny metal discs marked by traces of friction and impact.

Ni then uses an extremely fine brush with black acrylic paint to draw images on the discs. He depicts trees in the foreground, soaring mountains in the background, and riverbank scenery in between. The entire transformation, from hammering to painting, gives the coins new artistic value, symbolically showing how human intervention can change the value of objects.

In these paintings, Ni incorporates landscape elements often found in traditional ink paintings, such as a zigzag bridge next to shapely rocks, a waterfall under a cliffside willow, a river in a ravine among undulating mountains, a pavilion in a landscaped garden, waterlilies, pines, and animals. Additionally, he has drawn images of everyday life on some coins. These include portraits, ornamental trees, embroidered shoes, and Chinese utensils and furniture. The miniature paintings showcase Ni’s meticulous brushwork, rendering the images in precise lines and textures. When you look at the coins individually, the landscapes resemble scenery seen through a telescope. Yet, as a collective, they look like planets, each one existing in its own time and space, frozen in a vast universe.

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