Group photo of guests
On the afternoon of May 25, 2021, OCT Box Art Museum held a solo exhibition of Tong Wenmin and Li Ming, two young Chinese artists who have attracted international attention, and the opening ceremony of the Songlang exhibition of the 28th resident workshop of OCT Box Art Museum. Tong Wenmin's work often focuses on the intersection of the external environment and individual perception, through seemingly illogical behavior, inspiring subtle and inspiring actions and their visual poetry, this solo exhibition "As If Disappearing from the World" will show artist Tong Wenmin's work "As If Disappearing from the World" from the "Ruins Project" that has been carried out since 2020, with the support of Huayu Group and Huayu Youth Award. In Li Ming's video practice, we can always see a way of working with self-directed and self-acting, and this exhibition "201420162021" will show the artist's series of works in the medium of performance, video, installation and painting. Artist Song Lang works at the OCT Box Art Museum for half a month and will exhibit 4 series of works with Shunde locality.
Liu Ke, Executive Director of OCT Box Art Museum, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Artist Li Ming delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Born in Chongqing in 1989, artist Tong Wenmin graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and has won many awards such as the Grand Jury Prize of the 2018 Huayu Youth Awards and the Recognition of Artists at the China Performance Art Documentary Exhibition (2016). Tong Wenmin's creations suggest allegorical character of the body and action in semantically rich situations through often simplified or regular movements. In the work "As If Disappearing from the World" in the "Ruin Project", Tong Wenmin's "shadow" may point to the "shadow" in Neoplatonic thought. After the Renaissance, "pure shadows" no longer existed in concrete reality; the colors of "shadows" in the Impressionist period were scientifically colored; after the Post-Impressionist period, "shadows" were more of a reflection of thought. Let's return to the artist's own gender body, as a symbolic carrier of black and night, walking in the opposite of "Ming", which may become the "black Venus" (Flower of Evil) referred to in "The Flower of Evil" specifically refers to the female body. The night hangs through the light on the black-painted female body, obtaining a "projection" that is the study of poetic narrative, and the artist's narrative is more like a component of the previous work.
Guided tour by artist Tong Wenmin
"Tong Wenmin: As if disappearing from the world" exhibition site
Looking back at the artist's existing works, it seems that they are all interpreting the scale relationship between the body and the touch in the memory space, just like always naming those long and deep shadows, making various physiological and gender names, and the anthropomorphic shadows are endowed with the same attributes as life. Here one is reminiscent of a verse from Szymborska's "The Silence of Everything as a Mystery", which corresponds to the name of the artist's exhibition (as if disappearing from the world): "We know the vast space from the earth to the stars, but we have lost our way between the ground and the skull." ”
Born in 1986 in Yuanjiang, Hunan Province, Li Ming graduated from the China Academy of Art and now lives and works in Hangzhou. In 2008, Li Ming won the "Pierre Huber Creation Nomination Award", and the means of expression can easily transform the creative motivation, Li Ming is accustomed to placing the concept of the work after the image results fermented in the mind, which also makes his creation always have an "improvisational" state. Rather than saying that this creative context is a deliberate game created by the artist, it is better to understand that the first-person author is working with the audience to believe in the reins.
"Li Ming: 201420162021" exhibition site
In this exhibition "201420162021" at the OCT Box Art Museum, Li Ming tried to obtain a metaphor for his two-way referral through a specific naming experience about "apple". For his generation, the bearing significance of the "apple" is that it can really take a bite, representing the universal jokes and vague stagnant emotions of the bottom, and can also show a social "code" to complete his way of expression, so that all objects carry the social production attributes that cannot be removed and then transposed to the artist's specific behavior language.
Lighters are placed in the exhibition hall by the artist on a shelf called the Fleiren assembly line. The wheel is replaced with white according to the color system of the scene, the whole is like an oriental snake staff, the presence is not the artist's intention to bear the appropriation of the traditional aesthetic transformation with the intention of the meandering water, more like the presentation of a cheap chain production method specifically presented in the art museum, the repeated placement of many lighter cargo boxes on this chain, with the political retrieval anatomy of the current social production, the material on the chain stage is more inclined in the artist's feeling to have a silent pop plot, just like the poor and simple firecracker game of childhood. Such a game and our historical story can be arbitrarily staggered with "We are the hometown of gunpowder," Li Ming's way of dropping firecrackers seems to inadvertently reflect the more ancient fireworks dance, and the scene full of fragments after the lighter exploded and the occasional picture formed by the remnants of different gas flames is a kind of artificial story about existence.
Song Lang was born in Jiangsu in 1998 and graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 2020, majoring in experimental art. Matsuro is a young performance artist who relies on hormones to drive body and gender politics. In her body, she often reflects the positioning of gender entanglement and displacement. Through each step it is about this instantaneous action, triggering the eternal theme of history and the body.
Guided tour by artist Song Lang
"Song Lang: Choose Force" exhibition site
The double solo exhibition and resident project activities were hosted by OCT Box Art Museum, co-organized by Daliang Cultural Center, coordinated by the planning team of the Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and consulted by the Institute of Abstract and Creative Design of the Research Center for Art culture innovation and development of Sun Yat-sen University. The exhibition has received strong support from all walks of life in Shunde District, and will be open to the public free of charge from May 25 to June 23, during which there will be a free public tour every Sunday at 3:30 pm in the OCT Box Art Museum.
▲The scene of the opening dialogue
Exhibition site