3D printed objects
21 x 28 x 12 cm
2016

The collectibles wenwan is various kinds of collectables famously circulate among Chinese literati. This set of collectible has been scanned, magnified, and produced using a 3D printer.

Oil on canvas, brass sticks, documents
Dimension variable
2016

In the aftermath of the “85’ New Wave Movement”, some Chinese art critics put forward the issue of “purification of language”, turning the deliberation of the artistic language a visible debate in artistic practice. Artists in art academies, state-employed art critics, independent critics, alongside with young artists emerging from the “85’ New Wave” came forth to express their viewpoints. This discussion died down gradually after the 1989 China Avant-garde Exhibition. In this process of debate, the issue of the art language became a touchstone, reflecting the footholds of various value systems.

Photo
150 x 120 cm
2016

All four old photographs of the same content are laid out side by side, each of differing brightness, on the surface of a deep blue background. In the photograph, mid-aged men, all dressed in long-sleeved shirts lined up in front of an honorific arch, posing for a group portrait. On the arch, there hangs a banner that reads: the sorrows and joys of middle age. This is a photograph I have found by chance. The era to which the characters in the photograph belong to can hardly be determined. What is definite is only the mid-aged men and the characters in the banner.

Photography
10 pieces in various dimensions
2016

Since 2013, Beijing has experienced little changes. Still, it’s not quite the same.

Video installations, ten-channel video
2016

In Talks of Ten Figures, ten short texts about art run like “bullet subtitles” (comments inserted by viewers across films and TV series) across ten screens. These paragraphs that are like celebrity quotations consist of excerpts, as well as rephrased and rewritten texts put together based on a close study of the discourses and tones regularly found in historical cultural narratives. Similar to 1999, a sound installation presented in the Shanghai Biennale in 2014, this work reveals a collective narrative in history through anonymous commentaries.

Oil on canvas
230 x 280 cm
2016

The painting depicts the backs of two middle-aged man and woman. Both naked and slowly receding into the far horizon. It seems they are faced with the endless hurdles ahead of them.

Oil on canvas
205 x 250cm
2016

In the depth of the pictorial plane and the clouds hides such a line of characters, which writes: “All artists wish you a healthy body.” Every time I read a text of such a tone and phrasing, I feel somewhat unsettled.

Oil on canvas
250 x 205 cm
2016

On the occasion of a public talk in 1956, the Chinese literary theorist Zhou Yang proclaimed that regarding the implementation and promotion of Socialist Realism, one
“does not deliberate its definition. I feel that we do not need to stress it regardless of whether the definition has its fault or not.” His proposition gave an essential push towards the wide spread, interpretation and internalization of socialist realism among the Chinese population, and helped legitimize the party’s ideological hijacking of socialist realism. In his remarks, his repeated utterances of “Do Not, Leave it Alone and Do Not Stress” still lurks in the foundation for the acquiring, understanding, narratives of phenomena and concepts in today’s cultural field in China.

Oil on canvas
280 x 230 cm
2016

Towards the end of the 1970s, the previously strangled political atmosphere was loosening up in China, igniting the thirst of the entire society towards the new world and new knowledge. The instinct to take hold of and to interpret information has exited throughout the economic reform until today. This work appropriates the overview maps appearing at the entrance to parks and scenic spots, dotting a map that is a collage of all kinds of celestial surfaces, with names of intellectual movements and titles of books popular from the end of the 1970s. The result is a spectacle of seemingly directionless cultural movements.

Collage
30 x 21 cm (10 pieces)
2015

Figures Taken out of Context is a series of 10 collages, all of which feature common people or soldiers who have experienced different kinds of warfare. These characters have been cut out and extracted from their original settings, pasted onto black cardboard paper. I have painted pedestals for each of these extracted characters on paper so that they appear like statues. The viewer can barely make out the era and status of these characters based on their clothing and appearances. Due to the loss of context in these images, there is no possibility to determine more precisely such coordinates as the time of existence, actions taken, roles and missions for these characters.

Wall paper
344 x 500 cm
2016

This is a spur-of-the-moment photograph taken on the streets of New York. It is sufficient for a foreign visitor to show that he has been to America with such a photograph. Similarly, to enquire into the concept of the United States from the perspective of China is not unlike this photograph: an image of clarity, but one preventing deeper access. To China, the United States remains an other, even though this other has been around for nearly a century now. In this exhibition, the States will be present-as both an “other,” and a “witness” to this event of story-telling.

Painting installation
6 paintings, letter, hemp rope
Dimension variable
2016

By the end of 1985, American artist Rauschenberg visited Beijing and Tibet. The Chinese art history has given this particular trip, and his exhibition a very prominent role, attributing the transformation of artistic practice of many artists and that of the Chinese art field to his exhibition. This group of works was made by pretending to be Rauschenberg offering his friends in the Beijing art world a present and a letter addressed to them.

Acrylic on canvas
70 x 55 cm each
2016

In this set of graffiti-esque paintings, the images of the cat and the mouse as in the American cartoon Tom and Jerry appear over and over again, together with confrontational lines from selected poetries. Both components constitutes, without representing, each other.

(The lines are excerpts taken from The Tiananmen Poems, published in 1979. This anthology collects poetries that were people in Beijing voluntarily gathered at the Tiananmen Square, to mourn the death of the Country’s Premier Zhou Enlai, and to denounce “The Gang of Four.” In this work, I have deliberately omitted the terms in the original poems that were related to
“commemoration and condemnation” and chosen the vocabulary about sceneries and expressions of emotion. But the consciousness of class struggle still comes through such expressions.)

Gesso, vase, polo shirt
60 x 130 x 150 cm (Wood Stage)
21 x 9 x 9 cm (Flowerpot)
100 x 45 x 32 cm (Plaster statue)
2016

T his installation consists of a monument-like sculpture (which depicts the scene in which Beuys and his students used a broom to sweep up all the rubbish in Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Platz that followed the left-wing workers’ parade in May 1, 1972), a purple sand flower pot (made in the 90’s by renowned artisan Shi Yun, who was born in the 40’s and acquired the socialist realist artistic style before and during the cultural revolution) and a summer repairman polo uniform (on which embroidered a logo of Mercedes Benz). Course (as in political course) attempts to discuss the nature of sequences. Be it a political sequence, an ideological sequence or that of economy, sequences eventually frame the boundaries of one’s understanding and actions.

Installation, mirror, stone, printed silk scarf
Dimension variable
2016

In 1966, the epic musical The East is Red portrayed the most representative events that took place after the formation of the Chinese Communist Party. The style of story-telling in this musical has deeply affected the people of that generation. I have captured a few symbolic film stills from a documentary about it, both including images appearing on stage in the musical and those of the audience groups below the stage and woven them into the patterns of two silk scarves. In the gallery space, I arranged these two silk scarves, a reef stone, and a mirror into what seems like a scene from the Nature.