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MadeIn | Group Exhibition: Extravagant Imagination, The Wonder of Idelness

Curator: Lu Mingjun
Participating artists: Li Weiyi, Shen Xin, Shi Jiayun, WANG NEWONE, Wang Rui, Zhang Jiaxing, Tant Zhong

MadeIn Gallery is pleased to present “Extravagant Imagination, the Wonder of Idleness”. Selected works by seven emerging contemporary artists with distinct practice will be displayed, reflecting a multifaceted and thriving contemporary art scene. Today, as globalization, internet, capitals and the fairly developed art industry naturally became an advantageous environment, most artists from the new generation no longer suffer from anxiety pro- voked by identity crisis or local experience. This exhibition proposes a close look at the modes of expression and stances on cultural issues potentially shared by these artists, within our contemporary mainstream culture context. “Extravagant Imagination, the Wonder of Idleness” is curated by Lu Mingjun, and includes works by the artists Li Weiyi, Shen Xin, Shi Jiayun, Wang Rui, WANG NEWONE, Zhang Jiaxing, and Tant Zhong.

Using “interface thinking”, WANG NEWONE and Wang Rui combine images from daily experience to articulate an idiosyncratic aesthetic. These pictorial compositions don’t present any ideological framework or logic structure, but are rather based on certain experiences. History, reality, future, individuals and groups are crudely juxtaposed and compressed in a dramatized two-dimensional space and time. Although Shen Xin’s practice merges elements from cartoon, television programs, and pop culture, her video installations reveal an explicit awareness towards certain issues, whether sourced from society news, historical events, or even literature texts. However, she brings all these different aspects to the domain of her own experiences, and creates a polyphonic narrative in a deliberate and sophisticated visual language. Li Weiyi, on the other hand, plays pointless yet rational games of all kinds to reveal the tension within the cognitive system. Although we could certainly view those as unreliable or insecure aspects in Web age images, it is also an experiment targeting opposed relationship between humans and images, or, as we can say, between various modes of learning and their standard parameters.

Showing a certain reluctance to adapt to new technologies, Tant Zhong creates from her intuition toward materials and their physical characteristics. Taking spatial conditions into consideration, she builds up an inner continuation between objects and forms. Her practice reveals her critical analysis of the dialectical and the non-dialectical. In quite a comparable way, Shi Jiayun – regardless of the uncertainty of her painting subject, sometime being an image, an object, or pure imagination – always manages to compose in a restraint and introverted way a relation of forms beyond her immediate experiences. The most intriguing part may be imminent impulsions embedded in her works, they manifest a feeling of liberation, while constituting a constant process of emotions adjustment, control and judgment.

Unlike Shi, Zhang Jiaxing constantly cites art classical references; yet through his shifting and whimsical collage, Zhang exemplifies the currently trendy “mischievous witticism” and “impoverished aesthetic”.

Nowdays, resources of various kinds, capitals and technology are all entangled together. Neither friends nor ene- mies, they are like cells in artists’ bodies. The question isn’t merely about “who is the main entity”, as it is in fact a combination between today’s technology, capitals and humans. Coincidentally, the exhibition title was created by consulting the software “random exhibition title generator”. Although edited, the final choice: “Extravagant Imagi- nation, the Wonder of Idleness”, effectively corresponds to the practices of these participating artists, in terms of production method and fundamental signification.

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