Antenna Space will present works by seven artists at Booth C1 of Beijing Dangdai Art Fair 2024: Cong Cong, Owen Fu, Hong Yan, Li Ming, Liu Yin, Tara Walters, and Yu Honglei.  Meanwhile, Yu Honglei’s sculpture Sisters Down the Hill will be exhibited in the public art creation unit “Wonder”.

The serene yet melancholic daily life is enveloped by Owen Fu‘s subtle brushstrokes and texture on the canvas. Layers of thin colors tint these ambiguous and intertwined mornings and evenings, revealing the strange perception hidden beneath precise images. This experience of pareidolia is distinct from dreams; it resembles a form of linguistic telepathy, an imperceptible insight into the secular world’s enlightenment and penetration. In the artwork, like reconstructed constellations, scattered pearls are unexpectedly interconnected within the canvas; they shimmer in chaos, hinting at a surging, unincorporated sensibility.

Li Ming‘s videos and readymade sculptures possess a quality of chance and playfulness, taking their point of departure from ordinary and subtle signifiers to excavate, document, and present the evolution of images and concepts within the context of the times. They also draw connections from the artist’s own cultural and identity background. This sculpture, reminiscent of Dadaism, stems from Li Ming’s interest in the balancing tricks, a folk art created by workers during their leisure time on short video platforms, yet bearing striking similarities to Western contemporary art pieces. Parallel identities and classes, culture and history, seem to converge and condense here.

Hongyan‘s works are feature in capturing and depicting those trivial fragments of life that have not yet been penetrated, and with a consistent style that implies a long care for the spirit and nature of life. The resilience of life and the tension of life are seen in every scene. The colours change as the seasons change, as if going to the instinctive enlightenment and searching; depicting the point to the end and leaving a large area of white space, as if from the source of wisdom and abundance. With her childish and naïve brushstrokes, Hongyan tells us that people and the world are the same as everything else, and that people and life should breathe together. Things on Untitled (couple-1) and Untitled (couple-2) appear to be still, the subjects in the picture are at a distance from each other, and the cold and clear tone of the colours flows with an indescribable charm, which attracts people to reverie.

Yu Honglei‘s works construct an open visual culture system, using a diverse symbolic system to convey the essence of things; these sculptures refer to the physical sensations brought about by any shape in space, and they change in the sequence of things without depending on text; the ambiguous gaps between signifier and signified make both full of plasticity. ,#11 can be understood as an abstract head portrait: branch-like lines are extended from the main block, structurally extending the dialogue between line and plane; the collage of textured pink metal, emerald green felt, and silver bolt reflects the contrasting textures of hard and soft, as well as the intertextual relationship between partial and the whole.

Cong‘s paintings preserve individual experiences with rich traces, as she delves into the abundance of the mundanity through prolonged solitude. These lyrical and naive brushstrokes grow freely, drawing inspiration from natural forms, yet summoning movement within tranquility through shifts in weight, thickness, humidity and direction. The multiplicity of time and space, and the fluidity of body and senses constantly project, intersect, and entangled, collectively composing the animism within the canvas. The courtyards in Congcong’s paintings are the transformations of her inner palaces, while the wandering of the heart and soul is her brave way of confronting the chaotic and void world.

Liu Yin‘s series of works based on the images of Snow White and Alice are her projections of the current situation of women. In Liu Yin’s view, the story of Snow White and Alice tells the reality that women have been on the run, hiding behind emotions and adventures is that women are often in danger of being ignored and ignored. Like the controversy over the image of Marilyn Monroe in contemporary art, Snow White, as a representation of the female image, reflects the essence of women being gazed at, evaluated, and even shaped and constructed in popular discourse. Through the expression of cross-montage, Liu Yin constantly reproduces the same fragment in the fairy tale from multiple perspectives, and sends out a richer level of understanding and reflection on the same instant, so as to carry out a more diversified interpretation of female identity and situation.

Tara Walters‘ ethereal painting practice is a seamless blend of meditation and spiritualism. She harnesses elements of the material world, such as seawater, sand, and shell dust, to capture the fleeting language of our intuition and memories, imbuing her works with a subtle and enigmatic glow that serves as a launching point for our mental and spiritual voyages. The soft hues and dreamlike atmosphere of her paintings mask a profound exploration of meaning behind seemingly innocent subjects, transforming them into hypertexts that transport viewers to a liminal state between memory and imagination.

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Wonder Unit

Yu Honglei‘s Sisters down the hill decomposes and transforms the flexion and extension movements of the legs, summarizing the body posture into a shape; the artist uses silver metal pigment to cover the surface of this sculpture set, and its homogeneous, plain and colorless characteristics allow the sculptural language to be fully displayed under the light.