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Chen Xiao & Li Zhenhua
A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
Chengdu, China

Solo exhibitions of two artist, Chen Xiao and Li Zhenhua, will be launched at A Thousand Plateaus Art Space on October 15, 2016, which respectively are “The Last Night” of Chen Xiao and “Lost Horizon” of Li Zhenhua. They will present their new media works in the same exhibition space following the venation of their creation and reflection, and explore new perceptions through colliding with each other on different themes in the same space.

Chen Xiao’s creation often comes from his own travel experiences and knowledge. He transforms the feelings from each trips into a series of works and constitute a whole display project. In such projects, his work extends to the physical geography, history, mythology, culture, and society, as well as the relationship between these and his individual thinking and experience as an “outsider”, and ultimately return to explore the existence of self, the life, the cultural identity, and the possible association with art creation. This time his solo exhibition “The Last Night” comes from the honeymoon trip with his wife in Cuba. The desire to travel comes from Wim Wenders’s documentary, “Buena Vista Social Club”, which through music expresses the Cuban style and the original life emotions hidden deep in the modern world. With this as his initial imagination, Chen Xiao witnessed the local customs in Cuba, and he found a kind of eternal beauty linked to nature, while progressive development of the capital culture in local. His different works in the form of video, photography, installation, etc., constitute a complete space field which combines with literature and meditation to show the interpenetration of abundant perceptions, making the exhibition hall into the reappearance of his inner impression and contemplation of Cuba. The space contains longing, experience, gaze, and worry; through these outward mapping, inner-self is being explored, and this process will be integrated with viewing experience of audience.

With his rich and in-depth artistic practice, Li Zhenhua has worked across curatorial and creative fields. His entry point of creating usually is the generation and transmission of perception and knowledge and the relationships of daily life, society, history, cultural change in the state of post – modern history and society. His work often creates a path of reflection and feeling in interrelationships. The exhibition, “Lost Horizon”, was influenced by the novel of the same name by British writer James Hilton, inspired by the fictional utopia in a Tibetan mountain as described in the novel; “Shangri-la” is a place name derived from this novel and afterwards several places in the real world, such as Zhongdian County, has changed to “Shangri-la”. In Li Zhenhua’s eyes, this novel is not about the desire of mystery or escape from reality, but something more abstract and essential – to search and confirm the existence or feeling which is existed but beyond the world, which is usually beclouded. Therefore, his work is about “lose” and “seek”. The material form of the work is included in a simple pdf file, the audience can follow the document to interact with it. In this process, knowledge and imagination become clues, and what is been looking for maybe not “the distance” but “the miracle” in daily life, like the beauty prompted by light or dust. Li Zhenhua and Chen Xiao’s work echo on their themes, and ultimately attribute to the inner exploration and purification.

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