Galerie Huit (Hong Kong) and MAO Space (Shanghai) are delighted to present the exhibition ‘Folding Reality’ by Hangzhou-based artists Huang Jingjie and Liu Guoqiang.
According to Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy in ‘The Fold’, the world can be interpreted as a body of infinite folds and surfaces that twist and weave through compressed time and space. Taking this as our approach, reality can be understood not as a single existence but co-existence and interactions of the opposites – past and present, reality and illusion, inside and outside. It becomes an intriguing process and experience of unfolding to discover both sides and of uncovering layers of meanings.
‘Folding Reality’ consists of recent paintings, photography and mixed media wall pieces by Huang and Liu, both exploring the duality in our everyday world and psychological space.
Huang (b. 1988, Ningbo, China) employs paper as a recurring symbol in his works, depicting details of the folds, creases, cuts and shapes of the material. In his paintings, paper becomes a means to a journey through time, connecting and suggesting memories, senses and nostalgia. His portrayals of childhood paper toys, open books and wrinkled papers expand what the audience sees in the present as a dual journey of the past and the future.
Through appropriated mixed medium, Liu (b. 1988, Shandong, China) seeks to explore the fundamental idea of duality – positive and negative, imagined and real, impalpable and tangible. Liu selects individual symbols and ideas from daily life, removes them from their usual context, and rearranges such symbols that challenges a universally received understanding and interpretation of images. Leading the audience to deconstruct what has been assumed, Liu opens up new possibilities to reading this world and to creating an alternate reality.
Through the works of Huang and Liu, ‘Folding Reality’ offers two perspectives to exploring and reading reality and the Self. Huang embraces memories and their associations to connect to the present and future whilst Liu simplifies and analyses, removing symbols from their original context, thus creating a parallel reality.
