Solo Exhibition A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
A Thousand Plateaus Art Space will present the solo exhibition In Praise of the Everyday by the artist Zhai Ling from 27 September to 30 November 2025. We look forward to your visit!
In French writer Tzvetan Todorov’s Éloge du quotidien, the everyday is endowed with a meaning that transcends the trivial. He emphasizes that the authentic experience of human existence is not conveyed in grand historical or political narratives, but is often revealed through the most insignificant fragments, reminding us that the everyday is not merely a monotonous repetition, but a latent force.
Art historically, the notion of the “everyday” has long swung between the peripheral and the centre. While genre paintings and still-life from the Dutch Golden Age attribute solemnity to fragments of daily life, the modernists have turned it into a source of exploration. In the contemporary context, the quotidian becomes as much a mode of representation as a way of generating concepts. Zhai Liang’s exhibition In Praise of the Everyday unfolds in this context: through the medium of painting, the artist interweaves personal experience, fictional narratives, allegorical imagery, and art-historical traditions, adding new dimensions to the everyday.
“In Praise of” in the classical tradition was often employed to extol heroes or monumental events. In this exhibition, Zhai Liang's paintings confer value upon fragments of everyday life, transforming all aspects of living into subjects worthy of celebration. Todorov’s notion of “praising what one beholds” is extended here, as the elegy becomes a stance of looking. Zhai Liang allows the most minute moments of life to be heard through painting, thereby elevating everyday experience into a visual system of universal significance.
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