Shifting Thoughts: Works on Paper and Silk: Curated by GAO Yumeng
On January 20, 2024, BONIAN SPACE launched its year-end group exhibition Shifting Thoughts. The participating artists include Cheng Ye, Ding Qiao, Huang Jingjie, Hu Linhong, Lü Fanhe, Liu Yujun, Lin Zinan, Ma Jun, Sun Jing, Wu Mingyi, Wang Zhongyu, Xie Ai, Ye Zi, and Zhai Yi. The exhibited works focus on media such as paper and silk, attempting to explore how young artists face the integration of old and new languages, multiculturalism, and multidimensional methods. In the intersection of social reality, cultural identity, and media traditions, they seek their creative anchors, forming an artistic language expression that connects with the vast cultural spirit while existing and evolving independently.
The theme Shifting Thoughts originates from the Eastern Jin dynasty painter Gu Kaizhi's concept of "wonderful attainment through migration of thoughts" in "On Painting." He emphasized that artists should exercise their subjective consciousness in the creative process, delving into the objective subject through observation, perception, and imagination, thereby blending, extracting, and expressing to achieve this transcendence of thought, ultimately unifying the subjective and objective, rational and emotional in a "wonderful attainment." In today's context, young artists face a more complex spectacle society and a more diverse contemporary culture. They are also more actively exploring the vast artistic wilderness to pick up tools, collect images, and capture inspiration.
Thay either practice new characteristics and visual expressions from traditional tools and techniques or seek common ground and emotional refuge in the heterogeneous cultural connotations and migratory experiences of life. They develop personal styles and languages by paralleling the charm presented by natural objects, or create spaces and meanings of self-interpretation by externalizing bodily perceptions and inner life experiences. As the year draws to a close, we hope that this group exhibition can present a flow and interweaving of diversified thinking and multidimensional perspectives, aspiring to gain more inspiration and enlightenment in the Shifting Thoughts of language, imagery, and concepts.
