Group Exhibition Phoenix Art Center
Is this a significant era? If it is, weseem doomed to have no relationship with significance. Life is constantlyfragmented, twisted and squeezed by hormones, social value and identitypolitics. We learn delusion from reality and simulate reality within delusion.We become increasingly mature and sophisticated. We keep progressing andeventually draw ourselves further apart from our original dream. We cannot besignificant. But can we then be insignificant?
Young artists Li Chao, Hu Zi and Zhai Liangchose painting as a way of living, of self-construction dichotomizing the “ego” and “object”, and of self-improvement andspiritual self-exile when confronting the “real” world.
Looking at Li Chao’s work is like opening up a gate toenter his private dreamland. Greyish dark shades, virtual scenes, absurdscenarios and non-narrative fragments transmit the impression that this is farmore than just a simple overlapping of the real world and a mirrored image. Itseems he’s managed tobuild a private space behind the reality.
Hu Zi’s work features distinct personal traces: a subconscious revelationof feminism and an obsession with the prime of youth and hallucinations causedby hormones. Enlarged portraits and amputated body parts make viewers feel asif they are examining close-ups, reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s early works, which intentionallyguided the viewer’s eyesight tofall upon her preset focal points.
Compared to Zhai Liang’s oil painting, his small-sizedpaintings on paper convey a more intimate feeling, as if the artist was talkingto himself through those works. They become an integral part of his life, asordinary and indispensable as breathing and eating. Letters to An UnknownFriend are created specially for this exhibition by Zhai Liang. Based in NewYork, the artist chose to communicate with a friend whom he never met and wasprobably made up through traditional ways such as correspondence and painting.According to the artist: “The sense of being “unknown” may lead to affection or disgust. Either way it’s intriguing.”
Personal as they are, works by theseartists of same generation, Li Chao, Hu Zi and Zhai Liang, also show somethingin common in terms of inner appeal. Their work has nothing to do withsignificance, social background, political struggles and globalized aesthetics.Instead, they are fully invested in subtle emotions and feelings, as well asthe anxiety and self-improvement experienced by our mind and body.
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