"Apocalypse of Yesterday"is coming soon

Apocalypse of Yesterday

Curator:  Pu Yingwei   

Artists：Chen Weimin、Li Xindi、Liu Guangli、Lu Qing、Sophie JingWei Zhang、Wang Guofeng、Xiong Haoqi、Zeng Hong

Date: 2022/3/12 - 2022/4/23

“From the perspective of the progress of civilization, it is all related to ideology”.  

The war has changed everything, or the war allows us to realize all the realities that never changed. The proponent of Eurasianism, Russian political analyst and strategist Aleksandr Dugin, proposed: "We are dealing with civilizational and geopolitical processes in which the economy and energy are only tools. A unipolar world, a global liberal ideology, and Western hegemony is crumbling, and they are willing to do anything—even start a third World War—to stop that from happening.” Russia, on the other hand, declared that it was a "just de-Nazification war". Putin also emphasized in his speech: "The real strength lies in justice and truth, and justice and truth are on our side." (1) Looking back at 2016, with the US election and Brexit, "post-truth" became the word of the year in Oxford Dictionary. After the severe test of the global epidemic, the framework of the nation-state and the division of ideologies were strengthened, with legitimate rhetoric to each other's advantage being continuously generated in the media. In this war at this moment, in addition to the spontaneous live broadcast of the war on mobile phones by those who witnessed the war, various official media are also deploying their own propaganda weapons on a large scale on platforms such as Douyin and Twitter. (2) The people, in the propaganda of different camps, are acting as the power requires. Lies go their own way, and truths drift apart. This is the exact realism that we are facing today.

With its natural critical and speculative spirit, art is also involved in the generation of politics and civilization, and surplus value beyond these fields is hidden at the same time; history also serves this ahistorical potentiality. (3) On this basis, the exhibition title “Apocalypse of Yesterday” proposes a non-linear time paradox based on how we will face and interpret yesterday when historical nihilism has become real? How to interpret today and get involved? How to hope for tomorrow and build it? These three often presuppose each other and generate each other.It brings together eight artists of different generations from the 1950s to the 1990s. They are experiencing and practicing "how art creation is relevant to this problem-ridden world” in respective ways. This correlation is a contemplation for reality, meanwhile providing it with a critical and speculative weapon. It allows us to believe a more determined, open, free, and peaceful world is yet to come.  

Zeng Hong, The Shape - The People, Acrylic on Canvas, 273 x 205 cm, 2020

In Zeng Hong's work “The Shape - The People”, the working method of "socialist realism" has undergone a certain personal evolution. The overlapping brushstrokes are like individuals integrated into collectivism. The Chinese characters of “The People” are floated on the broken line of history. As the artist stated, “shape, form, and image are the basis for my thinking about painting, while the narrative becomes the hidden structure to connect the relationship between painting and people.” In fact, the concept of realism since Courbet has emphasized the social resistance action and the language revolution of the works are closely intertwined, the work experience in socialist factories and the deep concern for social issues in today's works are still the classical logic followed by Zeng Hong. As Zeng Hong painted in the work, “The People”, such a sharp word, is alternately projected on the screen, with its meaning exhausted in the hesitation and shaping, thus turning into a reduced image in the painting. However, this reduction is not abstract, but still a symbolic interpretation of realistic propositions. Image and reality never leave the scene.

Chen Weimin, Renyin Year - 3, Image output on paper, acrylic, non-reflective acrylic, wood frame, 65 x 57 cm, 2022

The perspective of critical realism is particularly profound and active in Chen Weimin. After the resumption of the national college entrance examination, he was one of the students of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute’s second session. Chen Weimin has gone through the acceleration process from the educated youth to the countryside, to the entire reform and opening. Chongqing, the mountain city where he has lived for a long time, has also experienced the transformation from the historical alternate capital to the municipality directly under the Central Government because of the Three Gorges Project, the pioneer city with the campaign to “sing red songs and crackdown on evil forces”, and the city with today’s influencing regime. Chongqing has been rudely prevailed by the mainstream of different stages, that of ideologies, consumerism, and progressive. These waves have generated a set of confusing characteristics within the city of Chongqing today. This complexity of times and the city brings unique nourishment to Chen Weimin’s creations. In the “Renyin Year” series, Chen Weimin bluntly focuses on the social issues that exist widely in both urban and rural areas in China. It is worth considering that a few months after the completion of these works, the outbreak of a related incident that was extremely serious has continued to ferment in the media. However, we cannot say that “Renyin Year” is a prediction of all these events. On the contrary, these events occur frequently in every corner, which further highlights the urgency of care for the marginalized groups proposed by Chen Weimin’s works. This is once again related to the situations of artists from Southwest China to which he belongs, for whom the “life flow” is not an abstract personal narrative, but close combat with a grand narrative.

Wang Guofeng, Link No. 2, Giclee Print, 310 x 1032 cm, 2022

A spectre is haunting the world—the spectre of Communism. From December 30, 1922, when the Soviet Union announced the establishment of the world's first socialist country, to the Cold War confrontation and drastic changes in Eastern Europe after World War II, the successive rounds of NATO's eastward expansion, the Crimea crisis, and today's Russian-Ukrainian war, these undoubtedly make us reconsider what this century-long utopian experiment has left for us, which is also the problem and responsibility that New China, as the only existing socialist superpower, needs to face. As an artist, starting from photographing the “Top Ten Architectures” in New China, Wang Guofeng has set his sights on the core issues. Although starting from China, the artist has expanded the scope of photography to Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, and other former socialist countries in Eastern Europe, which formed his subsequent “Utopia” series. Searching for the bloodline of New China and then establishing a cosmopolitan vision is the way of thinking that Wang Guofeng has always adhered to. In the new work “Link No. 2” exhibited, Wang Guofeng continued his concern of reality and thinking about the attributes of images. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the artist noticed and collected a large number of image materials from all over the world through the Internet. These images of the events that occurred in different times and spaces are then edited and synthesized to construct a subjective world theater. And his unique pixel processing makes the specific content of the image unrecognizable, leaving only a mosaic array of gorgeous flowers. In the current shrinking cyberspace, the processing of the image, the “encryption” of real images of objects, is inherently symbolic.

Lu Qing,The Floating Wall, Canvas image digital print, Single-channel video, colour, sound, variable   2020

Back to the other side of the Berlin Wall. After the outbreak of the epidemic, Lu Qing, an artist living in Berlin, made a red soft wall of his own. He took this wall to wander around the city: parks, subway stations, the Victory Monument, and the old site of the separation wall. How to mobilize collective emotion through everydayness is the core issue in Lu Qing's works. Being a stranger in a foreign land alone, the sensitive and fine light spots scattered on the red soft wall were gently blown up by the breeze, the red wall turning into the profile of Lu Qing's identity: a young man from China telling the story of Red China.

Sophie Jing Wei Zhang, Piazzas, Passages and Order No.3, Oil paint and pastel on linen,  105 x 130 cm, 2021

How should we describe grandness? Since 2015, populism has risen rapidly around the world, and the epidemic has accelerated the complete division of the world from physical to spiritual. It can be said that the disaster that swept the world disintegrated those lyrical narratives that were decorative, and everyone had to accept and face a grand era and a society where power is highly present. As a new generation of Chinese American artists with multiple overseas experiences, Sophie Jing Wei Zhang 's creations show deep and profound concerns to grand narratives that are rarely seen in her peers. In the "Square, Corridor, Order" series of paintings, the artist performed comprehensive topology research of the Forbidden City, the seat of the supreme power in ancient China. You can imagine that this research will traverse many aspects of this master of Chinese architecture, which integrates politics, religion, and customs. However, for the artist, this is not an infinitely grand journey, but an inward journey. As the artist said, "A huge building complex with strong political and historical significance has been transformed into several light private collection pieces, step by step."

Xiong Haoqi, Here I stand, Acrylic on Canvas,Oil, 100 x 80 cm, 2022

Xiong Haoqi, who has lived and grown up in Guangdong since childhood, reveals his unique port experience in his works, which are embodied with a traceable exotic feel. This kind of “exoticness” is influenced by Hong Kong culture. Hong Kong, as a former British colony, carries a unique international character. The British dramas that first entered the southeast coastal areas have become the visual memory of the artist since childhood in this process. After spending some time in Britain, the artist has a more personal understanding of how a specific cultural concept is expressed through literary and artistic works to realize the transformation of people's visual aesthetics, that is, the political identity of vision. In the works exhibited this time, the artist not only depicts the British drama “Pride and Prejudice” in his childhood memory but also depicts the classical scenes from the Disney animation "Frozen" as a typical cultural product. All the clips are reinterpreted by the artist in cardinal red, and this “dominant red” is indirectly related to the artist's understanding and interpretation of his own identity.

Li Xindi, Untitled (Work Light), aluminum square tube, acrylic sheet, light tube borrowed from the gallery, cockroach-killing gel, Kangfuxin liquid (medicinal extracts of American cockroach), 2022

During the development of Chinese contemporary art in recent decades, due to its special social regime and power relations, it has developed a unique narrative context both in terms of its nature of existence and its system. Artist Li Xindi takes the uniqueness of the development of Chinese contemporary art as an important background for his work and reorganizes and reproduces the important trend of institutional criticism in the history of Western contemporary art in China. In the work “Untitled (Work Light)”, the artist removed the lighting tube in the gallery space and installed it in hisBauhaus-like roof installation, which is sprinkled with Kangfuxin liquid and cockroach-killing gel. This made the audience easily recall the scene of American cockroaches crawling out of the international transportation wood crates in 798 Art District, in the darkness when the white box space of the gallery was turned off. This wonderful yetuncomfortable associative experience is also a complex opportunity to allow critical thinking about contemporary art in China, meanwhile a Frankenstein of pleasure, resistance, flattery, healing, capital, and alienation.

Liu Guangli, Anagāriya Single-channel video, colour, sound, 9’31”, 2020

The experience of living in France for a long time has made Liu Guangli more sensitive to the gray gaps and cultural fragments generated by the long-term friction and collision between civilizations. These fragments of history are seldom claimed by mainstream power discourse because of their vagueness and ambiguity. The long-term life experience of being in the “middle” position results in the artist’s echoes from deep inside and makes him cherish these intervals. In the work “Anagāriya”, the artist made an animation based on the specific events of “Zhu Ying and Kangtai’s encounter with Indian envoys when they are sent on a mission to Funan (now Cambodia)” during the Three Kingdoms period, with the narratives of second person’s memory of the future. (The narratives are reorganized and adapted from historical documents, with “portraits” as clues), trying to present the collective memory under the image of “monks” in an abstract way. Practitioners away from home exist in various cultures and religions, and their travels have truly promoted cross-cultural exchanges, taking the scenery away from here and into the distance. Today, when the epidemic has become the norm, “distance” has once again become an ambiguous definition. The distance, once eliminated in the era of globalization, has become extremely obvious and fallen into a battlefield of ideological constraints. Nevertheless, we should believe that after this turbulent baptism, the people will eventually become more. As stated in “Anagāriya”, “After the infinity of the afterlife, you will surely save yourselves."

Index 

(1)   Address by President Putin on February 24,2022, "It is necessary to explain again why we have to do this", 2022

(2)   Lord Auch II, “2022: First year of planetary war”, published in LeFront, 2022

(3)   "An Ode to Unfreedom - Survival and Art After the Epidemic", published in Twenty-First Century, Pu Yingwei, 2022

About Curator

Pu Yingwei (b.1989)

Lives and works in Beijing, China. received his BFA from Sichuan Fine art Institute, DNSEP (MFA with Félicitation du jury) from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Pu Yingwei's work has been defined as an exercise in conceptual art with a strong utopian zeal. He is the artist who interprets the multiple media and identity narratives that he practices in the public sphere as a comprehensive mobilization. Taking personal history as an absolute starting point, with the exhibition, writing, design, lecturing, teaching, and other forms of work, he attempts to produce a kind of “meta-politics" that transcends grand topics such as race, nation, and ethics. Such politics is as complex and full of paradoxes as the reality we experience.    Recent solo exhibitions: A Study In Scarlet: The Re-origin Of Revolutionary Realism, MAMOTH (2021) ; Obscure Adventure - Speculative Pop & Pan-Chinesism, Start Museum Research Center (2021); Recent group exhibitions: ON | OFF 2021:Carousel of Progress, He Art Museum(2022); 13th Shanghai Biennale: Bodies of Water, Power Station of Art (2021); Recent curated exhibitions: Sino-Wharf from Chinatown to Red Internationalism, OCAT Shenzhen (2020) He won the John Moores Painting Prize (2012)，His article “Empire’s Legacy：On “Pacing: A Journey of 70 years” and its silences” won the second prize of the IAAC(International Awards for Art Criticism) prize (2019)，He has been shortlisted for HuaYu Youth Award (2018), “China Art power 100”(2019), “Jimei·Arles Discovery Reward” (2020) and the Gen.T Asian Emerging Pioneers list (2020)，Porsche “Young Chinese Artist of the Year” award (2021), His film “Interview” has been shortlisted for Caen Festival (2018).        

About Artists

Chen Weimin (b.1959)  

Born in Fujian, Chen Weimin now lives and works in Chongqing. As a member of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute's grades of 1977 and 1978, Chen Weimin's works respond to the sharp perspective of critical realism in the images of Southwest artists in the context of the development of Chinese contemporary art. However, whether it is "scar art", "local art" or the expressionism prevailing in the Chinese contemporary art scene in the last century, Chen Weimin has creatively fused these genes after the turn of the millennium, giving birth to the Edge City series, which depicted the changes in China's urban and rural areas. Chen Weimin's vibrant fusion is closely aligned with China's unique modernization process, and at the same time, embodies the cost of China's replacement as a latecomer country that has defiantly plunged into the globalization landscape. For the absurd landscape of the urban-rural combination, the grotesque grafting of consumerism, the traditional painting of folk magic, these rich features make the pop language in Chen Weimin's works point to a specific ecosystem. However, today, when China has gradually entered the dominant position, various social realities will still bring us back to the bright and moving, fresh but full of sadness and helplessness in Chen Weimin's works.       Chen Weimin has participated in important group exhibitions such as "Transmission - Contemporary Art in Changing China" (1999), "Chongqing Chili" (2003), "Reshaping History Chinart from 2000 to 2009" (2010), "The VII Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art" (2013), "Voice of the Unseen" (2013), etc. His works have been widely exhibited at Ohio University Art Gallery, Tresolini Gallery, Carleton University Art Museum, Embassy of the Czech Republic in Beijing, China National Convention Center, etc.  

Wang Guofeng (b.1959)

born in Liaoning, currently lives and works in Beijing. He was recognized as one of the Top 15 Asian Contemporary Photographers by the International Photography Award (IPA 2017), named“Artist of the Year - Photography” for 8th Award of Art China (AAC 2014), received Honorary Mention for the Moscow International Foto Award (MIFA 2014), and shortlisted for "ING Real Photography Award"(2007).    His major solo exhibitions include, How to Connect Our Memories? Ginkgo Space, Beijing (2019); Spectacle Absolute – Special Exhibition of the 2018 Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2018); Probe, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong/Beijing (2015); News, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong (2013); Ideological Manifesto, Art Museum of the Moscow Art and Science Academy (MMoMA), Moscow, Russia (2017).     He participated in a number of important group exhibitions worldwide, including Border Crossings, The Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (2021); Havana Biennale 2019, Cuba (2019); Bric-à-brac, The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (2018); The Third Today’s Documents, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2016); Familiar Otherness – Art Across Northeast Asia, Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong (2015); Unfamiliar Asia, The 2nd Beijing International Photo Biennale, Beijing, China (2015); China Contemporary Photography 2009-2014, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2014); Ctrl+N - Non-Linear Practice, 2012 Gwangju Biennale Special Exhibition, Gwangju, Korea (2012); Contemporary Art of China and Japan, Busan Museum of Art, Busan, Korea (2010); The 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2007); The 6th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2006); Time after Time, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2003);  When Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US (2002).  

Zeng Hong (b.1959)  

Born in Ziyang, Sichuan Province.Graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2004.Currently lives and works in Beijing.    Solo Exhibitions:2018 Quaderni Rossi，Ginkgo Space，Beijing;2017 Unknown Form, Gallery Yang, Beijing;2015 key-Frame Extraction, Telescope, Beijing;2015 Zeng Hong, Gallery Yang, Beijing;2012 Zeng Hong, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing;    Group Exhibitions:2021 Tangle Of Revolution and Political Soul, SGA ,Shang Hai;2021 Study-Artists’ individual and Collective Study , HABITAT, Shang Hai;2020 A Composite Leviathan, Bridge Projects, los Angeles;2019 A Geography Of Resistance,Taikang Space,BeiJing;2019 A Composite Leviathan, Luhring Augustine Bushwick, New York;2019 Factories, Machines and the Poet’s Words: Echoes of the Realities in Art,798 Art Zone Beijing;     2019 Happy People,Inside-out Art Museum,Beijing;2019 Under The Sign of Saturn the internet,CLC Gallery Venture,Beijing;2019 The Glowing Warmth,XCHUA Gallery,Beijing;    2018 All are Digging for Gold in the World, YouPin Space, Wuhan;2018 New Expression of Beijing,N3 Contemporary Art, Beijing;2018 The New Masses，Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China;2018 Ensemble, One Way Art, Beijing;2017 4x3 + 4x6 + 1.5x9, OFF Space, Beijing;2017 Bird, Space, Deep Blue, C-Space, Beijing;2017 Constellation, NUOART, Beijing;2016 Go Live, Tong Gallery, Beijing;2016 The 1st Daojiao Art Festival, Xi Contemporary Art Center, Dongguan, Guangdong;2016 Each to His Own, OCAT Xi’An,  Xi’an;2015 ICA Off-Site: Hong Kongese,  Duddell's,  Hong Kong;2015 Hand Made, Mao Space, Shanghai;2015 Machine, Steph Gallery, Singapore;2014 Omnipresent Concrete, Hunsand Space, Beijing;2014 Summer 2014: Friends, Pool and Waves, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing;2014 Xu Ruotao and Zeng Hong, Egg Gallery, Beijing;    2012 Reality and The Aesthetic Regime of Art, Chongqing;2012 Project 12580, Floor #2 Press, Beijing;2012 A study on The Way of Seeing, Himalaya Space, Chongqing;2011 Line Up, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing;2011 Gallery Hotel Art Project, GALLERY HOTEL, Beijing;2011 Whites, EGG Gallery, Beijing;2011 EUREKAAAA, Ling Art Centre, Chongqing;2010 Young Artists Exhibition, Shanghai Art Fair, Shangha;2010 Cold Form, CCC Art Centre, Beijing;2010 Soliloquy II, A4-Gallery, Chengdu;2010 Supernatural, Milan Design Week, Milan, Italy;    2009 Fragmented Art, Sichuan University Museum of Art, Chengdu;2009 Sichuan Hot--The Next Generation, Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney, Australia;2009 Green Art Fair, China World Trade Center Exhibition Hall, Beijing ;2009 Sichuan Hot! New Painting from Chongqing City, China;Queensland College of Art;2009 Gallery, Brisbane, Australia;2009 Six Directions, A4Gallery, Chengdu, Sichuan;2009 Wen Chuan & Zeng Hong, Organhaus , Chongqing;2008 Looking for Me, Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai;2008 The Renewal of Memory, Gibsone Jessop Gallery, Toronto;2007 Word of Mouth from Four Corners–The Third Guiyang Biennial, Guiyang Art Museum,Guiyang;2006 New Faces, 11 Artists Studio, Chongqing;2006 A Tale of Two Cities-Beijing and Chongqing, Art Seasons, Singapore;2004 Removing the Seal: Sino-Korean Photography Exchange Exhibition, Chongqing;   

Lu Qing (b.1989)

currently drifting in Beijing, he graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute with a degree of bachelor in 2013 and a master class from the White Lake Academy of Art in Berlin with a master class in 2021. Lu Qing's work starts with personal situations in real life, associated with observation and deconstruction on his own feelings and phenomena, and then retracing his own growth and contextual words. The work shows a fractured perspective on the everyday revealed in my different arenas, it totally means a suspicion in things exterior and an interior mistrust as well, it will express in different mediums such as video, installation, performance and painting.  Personal exhibitions: ‘Fractured Parallel Visions’, a solo project by Ware Space (2021) ; ‘Hyphen’, a parallel exhibition to the 13th European Manifesto, Musée de Provence (2020) ; Paris ‘Yellow Reflection’ group exhibition project (2019) ; Macau Cattle Depot Performance Art Festival (2019) ;‘Bunker Publication’ group exhibition in Berlin (2018) .  

Liu Guangli (b.1990)

was born in Lengshuijiang, he currently lives and works in Paris. Graduated from Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in 2020. Passionate about image-making, he has developed an art practice around painting, video art, 3D animation, and virtual reality. His works attempt to question how the digital medium fits into contemporary storytelling and the reconstruction of our collective memory. He won the prize Golden Nica in the Computer Animation categorie at Ars Electronica (2021), Golden Key for best short film at Kassel Dokfest (2021).    Liu is recipient of numerous film festival, include: Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taipei (2022); Digital Art Festival, Videoformes, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2022); Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, America (2022); Cinéma du réel, Paris, France (2022); Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Oberhaussen, Germany (2022); One Song Is Very Much Like Another, And The Boat Is Always From Afar, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2022); HiShorts! Film Festival, Xiamen, China (2021); Collective exhibition, Memento, Zeto Art, Paris, France (2021); Festival International de Videoarte, Buenos Aires, Argentina, First Prize (2021); Beijing International Short Film Festival, Beijing, China, Special mention (2021); Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, America, Honorable mention (2021).  

Sophie Jing Wei Zang(b. 1994)

Lives and works in Beijing. Education：2016 - 2018MA in Painting, Royal College of Art (London)；2012 - 2016  BA in Fine Art (First Class Honours), Slade School of Fine Art (London) Selected Group Exhibitions：2021, A Couple of: The Dual-mechanism of the New Generation of Asian Artists, Hive Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing)；2020, Critical Configuration, Leo Gallery (Shanghai)；2019, Imprimitura, LangKong Art Museum (Beijing)；2019, Becoming, Migrant Bird Space (Beijing)；2019, Hidden Spheres, Showcase (London)；2018, The Royal College of Art Degree Show, Royal College of Art (London)；2018, Nostalgia, Art Number 23 (London)；2018, Flourishing Growth, Store Street Gallery (London)；2017, Camberwell Arts Festival, Alley Gallery (London)；2017, FBA Futures 2017, Mall Galleries (London)；2016, Paper Cuts, Transition Gallery (London)；2016, The Other Art Fair, Old Truman Brewery (London)；2016, Slade School of Fine Art BA/BFA Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art  (London)Awadrds：2018, Finalist, Hine Prize (London)；2018, Shortlisted, Chadwell Award (London)；2015, Awardee, Sir Andrew Taylor Prize (London)

Li Xindi (b. 1996) 

lives and works in Beijing. Li studied sculpture in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After completed his study in 2018, Li returned to his home Beijing and started working as a full-time exhibition designer and art administrator while continuing his individual artistic practice.    Following the paths of pivotal artists who work in the realm of Institutional Critique, such as Hans Haacke and Andrea Fraser, Xindi Li’s installation works pose questions and critically comments on the nature of art institutions and their role in producing culture and defining aesthetics in contemporary society with unexpected parody and non-sequitur humor. Aside from his individual art practice, Li has also worked in private and public art museums professionally; these professional experiences have significantly contributed to his understanding of the functioning of art institutions and initiated his constant introspective examining of the norms within the institutional system. In the artist’s words, the inner conflict created by the dual identity (being an employee and a mindful critic of the established system) does not affect his artistic practice significantly but it is the homology embedded in the two seemingly opposite roles that intrigues him the most.  

Xiong Haoqi (b.1997)

Born in Wuhan, Hubei, now lives and works in London. He is currently studying at the Royal College of Art. In his recent practice, Haoqi Xiong takes the British television series and Disney animation images introduced to China as clues. Using the color red, he explores how these imported cultural products are involved in shaping the perceptions and understandings of intimacy and self-worth of the young population. For the artist, red is a necessary color for sketching the characters, and the gradual difference in information felt in British life exacerbates this sense of cultural uncertainty, which makes his paintings more repetitive and thiner, working in a way that refers to the fictional texture of the foreign TV drama as a cultural product between the ideal, the real, and the ideological.

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今格空间于2014年在北京成立。作为一家当代艺术收藏投资的专业咨询服务机构，今格空间关注多元化的当代艺术表达，积极支持艺术家的创作实践并帮助建立其声望；同时，我们亦聚焦收藏家在社会变革的大背景下因文化身份、历史使命、生活方式、多元投资等需求与当代艺术进行的深层对话。

Ginkgo Space was founded in 2014 in Beijing. As a professional institution and consulting agency for collecting contemporary art, our mission is to highlight the diversity in artistic expression, to support artists’ practice and to extend their influences. Art collectors come from different cultural identity and lifestyle, carrying diverse mission and investing strategy. We are also devoted to providing platforms for deep conversations on the relationship between collectors and the context of contemporary art.

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开放时间  11:00-18:00 周二至周六（Tues-Sat）

北京市朝阳区798艺术区65幢 100015

#65, 798 Art Zone, Chaoyang Dst., Beijing, China