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"Transfixed"
With distinct life experiences, cultural backgrounds and art philosophies, the six participating artists of this exhibition use various media for their work of different themes. Despite this, however, when their work is displayed in the same space, the audience may discover on their own that the similarities and contrasts in the forms of these works are both obvious and obscure. This impression naturally reminds us of the concept of “global village” and furthermore the idea of mutual influence under multiculturalism.
Three-dimensional 2018
With the convenient dissemination of information nowadays, the human world seems to be shrinking not only on the material level but also on the spiritual level, drawing closer the distance between individuals. This increasingly visible spectacle of modern human society resembles a huge and invisible shell which covers the existing differences, and human behaviors and artifacts have entered a sequence similar to a grid. The above is a representation that everyone can see.
Untitled Seascape 2011
On the Internet or mobile phones, people contact with the phenomena and representations of various issues which have happened or are happening by viewing pictures. The easily accessible information is updated every second and people’s focus moves quickly from one message to another. It is time, rather than information, to have turned into fragments. Time is crushed into smaller and smaller pieces, and one may finish viewing an image or a piece of artwork in an instant. In other words, people nowadays have lost their patience and interest to look at artwork with concentration.
Untitled 2018
The practice of contemporary artists, however, goes absolutely to the opposite. They are more convinced than artists of any period in art history that even a tiny element constituting any history, place, object and content has physical characteristics which can only be re-cognized and defined through one’s experience, thinking, imagination and perception. To this end, they carry out the “spiritual gaze” lasting several years or even a lifetime at seemingly trivial things; apart from this, they also subvert the linear movement order of time with a poetic attitude, describing by fables the existence and being in the relationship between men and substance.
Gaia 2014
Danish artist Bjørn Nørgaard is one of the most groundbreaking and topical artists in the Nordic contemporary art since the 1960s. With an anti-mainstream art attitude, he constantly emphasizes the process of art practice rather than the artwork itself. He believes that the true value of art lies in intervening in social reality with a critical spirit. His work ranges from performance to installation, painting and sculpture.
Zodiac Dog 2017
Chinese artist Wang Qiang has been engaged in the experimental art creation since the 1990s. The scope of his practice involves installation, painting, photography, video, performance and sculpture. In a humorous and ironic narrative style, the artist dissolves the inherent cultural identity or attributes of different things in history and reality by means of functional transformation of various materials, and meantime creates a paradoxical interpretation.
Plane IV 2018
Icelandic artist Sigurður Guðmundsson is one of the most representative artists of the Nordic Fluxus and conceptual art since the 1960s. His early work primarily focuses on performance and photography and Situation is a frequently used name for his work. Discarding any symbolic and literal expressions of the meaning, Sigurður always finds in everyday things different situations related to the way human beings exist from the philosophical perspective of poetry.
Untitled Music 2011
Starting from the experimental art, Chinese artist Gu Xiaoping has been intervening in the realities of the Chinese society and discarding all kinds of clichés in art with a critical attitude since the 1990s. The artist demonstrates to the audience such an attitude and wisdom: using a simple and dispelling method to accurately express the complexity made up of the individual's questioning upon reality, reflection on history and personal cultural memory.
Ink lines in motion 2018
American artist Stevens mostly seeks his inspiration for his art from ancient Chinese philosophies, especially Lao Tzu's doctrine of inaction. In recent years, he created a large number of paintings, sculptures and performances under the theme of water. Rather than saying that these large-sized works show the visual tension of the painting itself, it is more accurate to say that the artist launches the process of mental experience and expression of the meaning of life in an inexplicable field of being and non-being.
Primordial 2015
Chinese artist Qin Jian has been devoted to participating and organizing international art exchange activities such as education, exhibitions and residency programs related to contemporary visual art since the 1990s. His art practice focuses mostly on painting. The removal of meaning, or the discovery of meaninglessness, is an attitude that he has maintained throughout his art practice – an attitude to question the definitions from various ideologies and to re-perceive and interpret reality. Allowing multiple memories or experiences of an individual to coexist within the same work in an unexpected way is his method to achieve the fable narrative.
Untitled 2018