A violin with wings flies through a sky filled with spinning moons, while rotating machinery gives way to strange landscapes and pressure valves. These chimerical images come together in Chinese illustrator and animator Sun Xun’s “Time Spy,” a 3-D animated film created from thousands of individual hand-carved woodcuts.

Hundreds of Chinese art students assisted Xun in carving each frame of the film, juxtaposing traditional and analog illustration methods with modern 3-D animation across digital screens in a way that turns a seeingly antithetical combination into something elegant. The film employs images of traditional Chinese themes, like the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth), in a symbolic exploration of the nature of time and how we try to make sense of it.

Sun said: “‘Time Spy’ has many layers from both Western and Eastern cultural traditions. The focus is on past versus present, on time. You cannot touch yesterday; you cannot touch tomorrow. All you have is now. Now represents time. Time is invisible and it’s untouchable, but it remains the foundation of our existence.”

One of China’s most prominent young artists, Sun created “Time Spy” for the second Audemars Piguet Art Commission in partnership with Sean Kelly Gallery, Edouard Malingue Gallery and Shanghart Gallery as part of a large-scale immersive multimedia installation first presented during Art Basel in Miami Beach in December 2016. Last month, Times Square’s Midnight Moment, an art initiative by Times Square Arts in which all of the billboards in Times Square synchronize to show an audio-visual art piece at exactly 11:57 p.m. everyday for three minutes, showcased “Time Spy.”

Sun’s artistic practice combines meticulous craftsmanship with stylistic experimentation not limited to any one medium. Blurring the lines between drawing, painting, animation and installation, his work incorporates a wide array of materials. Painting, woodcuts, traditional Chinese ink and charcoal drawings are often combined to create the foundation of his expressionistic, stop-motion animated films. These films are then presented in immersive settings and filled with realistic and fantastical iconography. His work often uses animals and insects as main characters to explore the themes of global history, culture and memory.

Sun’s “Time Spy” will be shown at E Museum of Contemporary Art (EMOCA) and he will give a lecture on his creations at the opening on the afternoon of Aug. 19.

Lecture time: 4 p.m., Aug. 19

Inquiries: 8277-7907

Exhibition dates:

Aug. 19-Sept. 2

Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m., closed Mondays

Venue: E Museum of Contemporary Art, 1/F, Creative Free Trade Zone, Binglang Road, Futian Free Trade Zone (福田保税区槟榔道创意保税园首层E当代美术馆)

Metro: Line 3, Yitian Station (益田站), Exit A and then take a taxi(SD News)