randian | 燃点

Tang Contemporary Art Beijing Space I is proud to announce the opening of “Time Lapse” a dual solo exhibition for Chinese artist Chen Yujun and Thai artist Pannaphan Yodmanee. The exhibition will run until June 30, and will include a range of mixed media, painting, collage and installation works.

Through artistic practice, Chen Yujun’s work presents the synthetic study and exploration of individual lives, regional space, and time, with strong cultural references and religious elements. In this exhibition, he shares his Map of Asia collage series, which stems from the unique cultural background of his seaside hometown in southern China. The lives of migrants from nearby Malaysia, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries, the mosaics with typical Islamic aesthetics, and a religious quality implied by the endless mirror images and constant fragmentation of the mosaics are all indispensable parts of Chen’s Map of Asia. The installation Temporary Constructions also reflects religious imagery in the artist’s mind based on a fabricated, constructivist perspective. From the specific, intrinsic life of his childhood village, he moves towards the overall consideration and study of religion, culture, politics, and life in the region of Southeast Asia. Chen’s work focuses several sides of a multi-cultural abstract aesthetic and religious experience.

In contrast to Chen Yujun’s abstract collages, Pannaphan Yodmanee’s artworks take more representational form, creating a cultural and religious mood that has grown with her. When she was young, she often painted on the walls of temples. These memories of materials have informed her later works on numerous architectural fragments.Her works often take rocks, minerals, and other natural materials as vehicles, drawing on Buddhism and architectural elements to convey her thoughts on the intersection between ancient Buddhist cosmology and modern society.In new materials, Yodmanee’s practice cuts between the contexts of modernity and tradition, constructing spatial motifs that transcend religious spirituality and universal values. Pannaphan Yodmanee transforms traditional Southeast Asian art into a meditation on contemporary issues, one of the key characteristics of her work.

The works of both Chen Yujun and Pannaphan Yodmanee present interlocking and multi-layered regional, cultural, and religious connections and visions. These two artists draw on slices of the real world and lived memory, exploring changes to individual identifications, collective modes of living, and social structures amidst the sustained movement of culture. Together, their work presents a new chronicle of Asia that spans temporal and spatial circumstances.