EXHIBITIONS

The multiple point perspective in traditional Chinese shan shui
(mountain-water) painting organizes space through multiple
viewpoints, transforming static landscapes into a realm that
can be mentally traversed and inhabited. Today, satellite
remote sensing technology constructs a dynamic mode
of viewing that seems to position the observer beyond the
Earth, enabling users to remotely access, browse, and zoom
in on three-dimensional terrains via digital interfaces. Both
viewing mechanisms suggest perspectives and dimensions
that transcend the scale of individual human experience.
The artist superimposes them through the diancun
(dot texture stroke) technique in the Planetary Shan Shui
series, allowing nature—once rendered as data—to
reemerge as a spiritual presence.
Zen Buddhism regards “enlightenment” as spiritual selfrealization, while Zen painting seeks to convey states of
mind. In the Enlightenment series, the artist depicts figures
in meditation through seemingly spontaneous brushwork,
titling them with paradoxical contemporary dialogues
that parody moments of enlightenment in Zen koans.
By exploring the tension between inner realization and
social recognition, the artist examines how contemporary
aspirations for spiritual fulfillment are continually being
produced, misinterpreted, and consumed. Interweaving the
Planetary Shan Shui and Enlightenment series, the exhibition
poses a question: in an age of planetary-scale technology,
how might we turn inward?

Ascending the signature fair-faced concrete staircase by Tadao Ando, visitors first encounter the iconic green apple. Turning back, a five-metre coiling Corinthian column nods in greeting.
This is Xu Zhen’s “Hello.”
The classical column — one of the most stable structural symbols of Western civilisation — undergoes a fundamental shift here: it no longer bears order, but transforms into something almost biological. Theopening at the column is not decorative but an operational structure: simultaneously a physical point of passage and a turning point in the act of looking. The gaze is reorganised between entry and exit, becoming an interface through which meaning is continuously opened up — a device allowing relations to be generated perpetually.
A more critical move follows: this is what Xu Zhen has fashioned as a “perforation of civilisation.” Within the scene of near-genesis created by the winding Corinthian column and the green apple, the artist invites visitors in Suzhou to step into the “Xu Zhen Garden” — a space where the artist examines civilisation and globalisation.
Over the past several decades, “globalisation” has become the default framework for understanding the contemporary world. This seemingly neutral term has always harboured a singular narrative: the expansion and interconnection of capital, trade, information, and institutions on a global scale. Xu Zhen’s practice enters precisely from this concealed point. What he addresses is not “globalisation” itself, but a far more complex proposition — the pluralisation of globalisation.
The dominant model of globalisation rested on a premise: that Western classic is the standard, and other cultures are resources, supplements, exotica. Art history, too, was understood on this premise as a totality with its own internal continuity. Yet in Xu Zhen’s work, we repeatedly encounter familiar visual sources — classical sculptures, religious
symbols, museum displays, industrial products — drawn from both East and West, precisely cut, spliced, and displaced to produce a destabilised visual experience: familiar, yet somehow wrong.
If this disorientation is exactly the artist’s intention, it is because he seeks to interrogate a long-dominant mode of looking — an interpretive framework centred on Western art history and grounded in linear development.
Xu Zhen’s question is: has globalisation solidified or loosened this structure? His answer: globalisation is not a unidirectional process radiating outward from a single centre, but a site where multiple civilisations, images, materials, and bodily experiences rewrite one another. And so he scrambles the order, stripping every sign of its natural centre.
The exhibition is therefore not a simple “comparison of civilisations,” nor an attempt to generate conflict through the juxtaposition of cultural symbols. It is an inquiry into how we might rethink the ways in which “the world” is perceived, organised, and seen.
In the “Eternity” and “Evolution” series, Xu Zhen standardises the components of civilisation as if assembling a smartphone, then grafts and splices them together. Greece is no longer the standard — only a fragment swept into the global circulation of images. Like an operating system, he displaces these once-central figures from their stable
positions, while marginalised elements enter the structure with equal force. The question is not how non-Western civilisations might “join” globalisation, but that globalisation was always meant to be rewritten by multiple
civilisations together. In the exhibition’s first unit, “Beverage,” “Eternity,” “Evolution,” and “Under Heaven” collectively declare: the world image has become hybrid, the classical centre has been destabilised, cultural
boundaries have dissolved, and modern consumption has drawn everything onto the same surface. Between classical form,
historical symbol, and contemporary consumption image, no stable boundary has ever existed.
For Xu Zhen, the body is not a closed object, but an existence continuously intertwined with the world. In “Beverage,” “Tool,” and “Details” among others, the classical column is stretched into the form of a straw — and the
artist is perfectly happy, during installation, to insert this tube into his own head. What can we “draw” from history, and what does “Tool” squeeze out? Xu Zhen places his own body and practice at the seams between different
civilisations. In his system, body, imagery, and civilisation no longer exist as entities but as interfaces — all meaning arises in the act of connection.
In the exhibition’s final chapter, Xu Zhen does not seek to replace the “West” with the “East,” but to mobilise a mode of understanding distinct from the modern singular world-image. For him, ink painting is not merely a traditional medium but something closer to a still-operative perceptual technology and cosmological inheritance. In
the exhibition, the “Astronomical Chart” — one of the four great stone engravings of Suzhou — is placed alongside his ink works, forming a structure of perception that bridges past and present: the world is no longer understood as
a totality of graspable objects, but as an order that continuously manifests across different
scales and relations. Landscape, qi-resonance, and astronomical schema here are not symbols of cultural identity, but a reminder that the world is not an object — it is a field of relations.
Curator:Sheng Liyu

Xu Zhen’s solo exhibition Instant Contemplation systematically situates the Chinese painting tradition within his artistic methodology of “ecosystem as medium.” Through four sections — “Giant”, “Shan Shui”, “Mist”, and “Enlightenment” — the exhibition traces a complete contemplative journey from the spirit of objects to the realm of the mind.

The exhibition title, Instant Contemplation precisely captures the familiar experiences of contemporary life: on one hand, the instantaneous, surface-level perception perpetually accelerated by technology; on the other, the extended, reflective rhythm of thought that accommodates chance and diversity. This juxtaposition points to a prevalent contemporary mental state — the simultaneous operation of multiple temporal logics within one body and consciousness — which profoundly shapes how we perceive the past, present, and future. The exhibition seeks to render this cognition visible: to allow fleeting sensations to unfold through contemplation, and to enable contemplation to regenerate within an accelerated spatiotemporal reality.

The four sections articulate a clear conceptual progression: “Giant” expresses the cosmic energy of ritual vessels through the spirit of brush and ink; “Shan Shui” transforms data topographies into traversable digital terrains; “Mist” reveals the symbiotic traces between silk and time; and “Enlightenment” stages a trans-temporal dialogue between news imagery and the Zen tradition of sudden enlightenment. Through the intervention of conceptual and technological processes, the medium of traditional Chinese painting is creatively reconstituted. Rather than a return to tradition, Xu Zhen reconfigures the cosmology and technical lineage of Chinese painting into an operable contemporary framework, offering a distinctive methodological tool for global cultural dialogue.

At the core of Xu Zhen’s practice lies the notion of ecosystem as medium. Here, “ecosystem” extends far beyond the natural—it encompasses historical contexts, geopolitical configurations, ideological and institutional structures, as well as media technologies. In this exhibition, Xu Zhen subjects this methodology to a deep examination within the framework of Eastern cultural systems. Chinese painting—an art form and philosophical vehicle spanning millennia—is reactivated as an active cultural technology. With its unique cosmology, spatiotemporal order, and technical logic, it crystallizes a complete continuum from modes of seeing to systems of value.

Amid ecological crises, technological transformations, and geopolitical reconfigurations, Xu Zhen’s practice demonstrates that the Chinese painting system provides not only aesthetic reference but also structural potential for reshaping contemporary culture. Through conceptual and technological innovation, the traditional medium of painting acquires new expressive dimensions.

Xu Zhen: In Just A Blink of An Eye Performance at MOCA BANGKOK

MOCA BANGKOK is excited to present In Just a Blink of an Eye, a groundbreaking performance piece by renowned Chinese contemporary artist Xu Zhen. This work challenges our perceptions of time, reality, and the human body, inviting viewers to experience an extraordinary moment frozen in time. The performance will be on view only on Saturdays and Sundays at MOCA BANGKOK’s 5th Floor Temporary Exhibition 4 from Saturday, December 7 to Sunday, December 29, 2024.

In Just a Blink of an Eye features performers suspended mid-fall, seemingly defying the laws of gravity. The piece explores the materiality of the body, pushing the boundaries of physical and cognitive understanding as the audience contemplates the constructed nature of reality and the fragility of existence. The performers hold their impossibly still poses for hours, supported by hidden structures, creating a powerful moment of stillness that invites deep reflection on time, materiality, and perception.

Originally staged in China in 2005, the work critiqued precarious working conditions in factories and the volatile global economy. By 2019, its meaning had evolved, reflecting a more stable economic climate. With a blend of humor, irony, and conceptual depth, Xu Zhen transforms the performers into living sculptures, blurring the line between stillness and movement while manipulating time itself.

The performance has been exhibited at major venues worldwide, including the National Gallery of Australia (2020), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, 2019), Art Basel (2014), and Hayward Gallery (2012). Now, this thought-provoking performance will be on view at MOCA BANGKOK’s 5th Floor Temporary Exhibition 4 from Saturday, December 7 to Sunday, December 29, 2024.

Performance Schedule:

In Just a Blink of an Eye will be performed every Saturday and Sunday, with shows at the following times: 11:00 AM, 01:00 PM, 1:50 PM, 2:40 PM, 3:30 PM, 4:20 PM, 5:10 PM. Each performance will last 20 minutes. No advance reservations or special tickets are required; simply pay for museum admission to witness this stunning live art experience. Please anticipate lines to enter the exhibition Xu Zhen: In Just a Blink of an Eye, as the work draws viewers from around the world.

(Text credit: MOCA BANGKOK)

Xu Zhen’s first solo exhibition in Tibet, titled “Patination by the Globe, Aura of Shan Shui,” opened on September 22 at the Jebum-gang Art Center in Lhasa. The exhibition is curated by Professor Lu Mingjun from the Department of Art Philosophy at Fudan University and will showcase more than 20 new ink paintings created by the artist, focusing on Tibet within the context of globalization. The works present the artist’s exploration and latest practices regarding cultural mobility and cognitive relationships.

Due to its geographical and cultural characteristics, Tibet has long attracted the attention of scholars and travelers worldwide. Since the last century, Tibetan studies have become a popular field of the humanities globally. Particularly in the West, Tibet has been regarded as “a postmodern utopia, an ideal spiritual world disconnected from material reality.” This perception has also turned the “Tibet issue” into a matter of universal values and political stance relevant to all people around the world. As Professor Shen Weirong, a Tibetologist, stated, “The Western world has achieved a form of spiritual colonization of Tibet through the creation of this Shangri-La-like mythic image of Tibet.” In response to this Shangri-La-like portrayal, artist Xu Zhen used a more vivid term: “patination.” Perhaps it is this long-term, unbounded “patination” that makes this sacred land even more mysterious and distant.

Xu Zhen is no stranger to Tibet. As early as 2005, he created his first work related to Tibet, titled 8848-1.86. In this piece, Xu claimed that with the assistance of his teammates, he sawed off 1.86 meters from the summit of Mount Everest—this being his height. At the exhibition, he simulated the process of climbing the mountain by displaying climbing tools, materials, and a looping “documentary” of their act of sawing the summit. Placing human beings above nature and beliefs, this work an absurd and ironic response to Western “spiritual colonization” and has attracted widespread attention.

Continuing along this line, 20 years later, Xu Zhen once again focuses on Tibet. The entire exhibition uses traditional Chinese painting as a medium to express reflections on the relationship of cultural cognition between the East and the West. In Xu Zhen’s view, Chinese painting and its spirit can be seen as a new cultural energy, an attempt to harmonize the reality of global “patination”. It also serves as a particular form of technology that counters the Western technological view of nature as an object to be conquered and exploited.

A+ Works of Art is delighted to collaborate with ShanghART to bring Xu Zhen’s international contemporary art project, Signal, to Thailand.

The project consists of gifting a painting from Xu Zhen’s Passion series to audiences worldwide, inviting each participant to post and display their paintings on their social media accounts. The resulting online exhibition continues to grow with time as more signals broadcast around the world. Passion is a series of oil on canvas paintings that formally began in 2021. Derived from mobile device screenshots of social media platforms, the artist captures the energy of online social media interactions through applications of avid brushstrokes and impasto.

Xu Zhen has worked continuously to build the series, aiming to reach out to hundreds and thousands of people around the world. Since its launch in August 2022, about 3000 of these paintings have been gifted to participants across Asia, with accompanying physical presentations taking place in Jakarta, Singapore, and various sites in China.

The physical exhibition adopts from his latest presentation, Signal 2.0, in which social media postings of participants are adapted as backdrops for both large and small pieces from the Passion series. Audiences are invited to immerse themselves in Xu Zhen’s unique impression of the emotions and reactions from our online social media interactions.

(Text credit: ShanghART and A+ Works of Art)

Curated by Wang Yamin, the exhibition presents the rich artistic career of Xu Zhen, China’s most active contemporary artist. Born in 1977, Xu Zhen is one of the representative figures of his generation of Chinese contemporary artists, having gained international recognition for his innovative and provocative art practice. Xu Zhen has been active on the global art scene since the late 1990s, often exploring such themes as cultural identity, globalization, and consumerism. His practice spans a variety of media, including installation, sculpture, painting, photography and performance. In addition to being an artist, he is also a curator, founder of MadeIn Company and XU ZHEN^®.

The exhibition at MOCAUP will feature over 100 works of art from Xu Zhen’s career spanning more than twenty years, highlighting his typically assembled, iterating, and self-consistent cohort of works. They belong to the artist’s signature series including “Under Heaven” (2011), “MadeIn Curved Vase” (2012), “Alien” (2017), “Tools” (2018), and “Base” (2021), presented alongside a debut of his latest creations. In the artist’s paintings and sculptures, especially the most representative ones such as “Eternity” (2013), European Thousand Arms Classical Sculpture (2014), and Hello (2018), ancient cultural relics and symbols of civilization are transformed into works of art. The artist thus raises the issues of originality and innovation, conformity and confrontation, value revaluation and cultural transformation, etc. within globalization.

The exhibition centers around Xu Zhen’s artistic practice and proposes its core as “ecosystem as medium”. Epochal changes, ideological iterations, and contemporary art practices together constitute an ecological reality, which Xu Zhen creatively transforms into the medium of his practice. By superimposing and connecting different art systems — those of art making, curation, operation of gallery, art museum, and art media, Xu Zhen pioneers a path of artists’ self-ecologicalization, refreshing and redefining their meaning of work and scope of creation. In the global contemporary art scene, he demonstrates the possibility of a universal contemporary art with Chinese characteristics and primal vitality.

Hong Museum, Wenzhou is pleased to present XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition “The Forebears are Born” on August 26, 2023. Curated by Lin Zi, the exhibition will showcase XU ZHEN®’s latest paintings and sculptures. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Wenzhou and the opening exhibition of Hong Museum.

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, works and lives in Shanghai) has a career spanning over 20 years that dates back to 1998. Starting from his early expression of individual mentality and evolving towards a confrontation with social realities, his practice has embraced innovations in addressing the current state of the Anthropocene, while being constantly oriented around the dynamic energy and essence of culture. XU ZHEN® explores how art can create possibilities and offer new experiences when facing the changes of the times.

“The forebears are born by being trained. Training them is training a part of ourselves, the part that has been termed destiny.” The exhibition at Hong Museum continues XU ZHEN®’s interest in the transformation, iteration, and re-evaluation of cultural symbols in a post-globalization ecology. Through art, the exhibition seeks to galvanize people into reimagining the future and primitivity. “Today, our knowledge, civilization, and truth (i.e. the forebears) must feel fresh. Only knowledge that can be applied afresh to the new era can have meaning.”

The Nanjing G Museum is pleased to present XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition “Likes in the Flow, Ab-Ex on the Street” on July 14, 2023. The exhibition will showcase XU ZHEN®’s latest creations from the Passion series alongside a multimedia work Base (2023). Xu Zhen was born in 1977 and is considered an iconic figure in Chinese contemporary art. He has gained international recognition for his innovative and thought-provoking artistic creations. Xu Zhen has been active on the global art stage since the late 1990s. His artistic practice spans various mediums, including installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and performance, often exploring themes of cultural identity, globalization, consumerism, and more.

Xu Zhen®’s Passion series, under the surface of abstract expressionism, represents both the derivative of intelligent social media and a reflection of everyday online life. Its foundation lies in a remarkable invention – the screenshot function of smart phones. All the images are transcribed from the constantly forwarded chat contents on our phones, as well as various cropped and edited screenshots.

The Passion series of paintings explores the data-driven reality of the social media era and depicts its possible manifestations. It creatively continues and develops the genres of Pop art, conceptual art, and abstract expressionism in the context of the global shift towards cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The Passion paintings exhibit a distinctive style. Xu Zhen fully adheres to the logical and visual habits of social media interfaces in his painting practice. Using oil paint as the medium and constrained by three colors, he comprehensively expresses emotions from social media. Emotional communication, information exchange, thought rhythms, and the density of confessions all morph into the primary dynamic relationships on the canvas and directly influence the language and visual expression of the artwork. In doing so, Xu Zhen integrates painting and screens, as well as the ubiquitous elements of virtuality and reality in the contemporary world, expanding and strengthening his visual language. The artist takes this relationship to the extreme, prompting us to reflect on the logic and ethics of the social media era.

In the exhibition “Likes in the Flow, Ab-Ex on the Street” at G Museum, XU ZHEN® will present his latest works from the Passion series, marking the first large-scale and systematic display of the series in a museum space. In these new works, the expressive power of emotions is noticeably enhanced. The atmosphere of the paintings is split by the contrasting emotions conveyed through different dialogues, while the textual content and relationships of social media conversations are transformed into abstract brushstrokes and shapes. The experience of both perceiving the expressiveness and attempting to translate it into emotions and content alternates throughout the viewing of this series. Abstraction, expression, and stylization become less definitive. The ultimate goal of this series seems to be to present a process of communication, a reality of digital desire. This creates a new relationship among the elements of the artwork, transcending their role as a form of language and becoming practical tools of communication.

Unlike XU ZHEN®’s large-scale paintings, the protagonists of the artist’s “Signal” project – thousands of small paintings from the same series – appear neatly and densely on the wall, like lines of code ready to be called upon. In the past year, over 2,000 small paintings have been gifted to the artist’s friends and audiences in different countries, who then display the paintings on their respective social media platforms (WeChat, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) to reach a wider audience. In this exhibition at G Museum, Xu Zhen selected some images of the Passion paintings taken by the audience themselves from these social media channels and juxtaposed them with the actual “Passion” paintings in the gallery. In doing so, the artist embeds the gestures of smearing from his own paintings into the actions of posting, sharing, liking, and commenting of these social media images. Xu Zhen appropriates how the audience uses his paintings’ images and overlays them with new paintings. He implies the question of “how a painting appears today” and mobilizes the audience’s sensitivity to the digital and real-world interface.

The design of Apple Store has a high level of recognition worldwide, providing people with an experience of innovation and high technology in a retail setting. In Base, Xu Zhen directly appropriates a complete set of display items from Apple Store, including tables and mobile devices, and designates them as sculptures for the exhibition. The Apple devices, such as iPhones, play real digital content generated during their actual usage. These authentic digital contents disrupt the comfortable, secure, and professional high-tech atmosphere created by commercial design. Here, the artist integrates various aspects of social production, incorporating industrial design, consumer experience, contemporary technology, and big data platforms into the artwork. The entire set of products and display arrangements become the “pedestal” of the sculpture, while the content on the phone screens represents the “shape” of the sculpture, making Base a conceptual artwork that continuously captures the reality of digital image production.

Similar to the assembly of data-infused emotions and the circulation on social media, in the exhibition “Likes in the Flow, Ab-Ex on the Street” at G Museum, XU ZHEN® creates a portrayal of the digital era and places it within the urban landscape projected by the museum at an altitude of 200 meters. This arrangement organizes a new reality of technological culture in terms of aesthetics and sensibility. The collaboration between G Art Museum and XU ZHEN® in presenting this solo exhibition not only aligns with the museum’s ongoing support for contemporary Chinese art, bridging reality and envisioning the future, but also serves as a further interpretation of this purpose following its inaugural exhibition” Eternal and Ever-changing” of artist Yu Youhan in 2022. It aims to provide an alternative aesthetic path for urban life in Nanjing through contemporary art.

The exhibition catalogue, “Likes in the Flow, Ab-Ex on the Street”, will be published featuring a review by the guest author Wang Yamin and will include another article written in 2021 by philosopher Lu Xinghua, titled “In The Excrement Lies Gold, Where Aimless Prodding Births Divinity”.

ShanghART Shanghai is honored to present XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition “Zoning Out” on Nov.8, 2022, featuring XU ZHEN®’s latest painting series, “Passion”. This series continues Xu’s interests in various propositions including new technologies, excess knowledge and information, human intellectual evolution, as well as his constant exploration of the diversity of creative media. This exhibition is a highly sensitive and brand-new expansion of the artist’s visual creation in the context of the post-global era.

“Zoning Out” is a brand new scene created for the “SIGNAL” project. Viewers will enter a hall full of paintings. All the paintings are firing messages excitedly, cutting the viewer’s gaze. “In the age of the Internet, people are zoning out on the phone incessantly. Everything is considered impermanent. Therefore, there are countless crossroads of action that lead to everywhere, no idea what will come about next moment.” – “Zoning Out” is a celebration and a rehearsal of this reality. In the “Passion” paintings, each work is such a crossroads. The swiping fingers on the screen are of the same nature as the flurry of brushes on the canvas – they are both confident, greedy, and blind. The artist uses the brushes like a severe phone user to find new possibilities and directions in it.

The exhibition works as a physical presentation of the contemporary art project “SIGNAL” initiated by Xu Zhen. The artist gives as a gift one of his “Passion” paintings to the global audience, and each recipient is invited to display the painting they receive on their social media accounts. A long-term, unceasing “art exhibition” will thus take place on Internet media platforms. The project has landed in Indonesia, Singapore, and China since 2022. It aims to send the signal of art to people around the world and share with them the future of art.

“The Majesty of the Moment”, this is an opinion on the American modern photographer Alfred Stieglitz, his city and his subject New York in the book Aisthesis: Scènes du Régime Esthétique de L’art written by Rancière. Rancière’s argument originated in a commentary on Stiglitz in 1921. So far, exactly one hundred years.

Rancière believes that Stiglitz’s artistic techniques condense the conquest, experience, and rhythm of a civilization. It also allows skyscrapers to rise above the city, and allows the tail smoke of trains and ships to disperse into the sky.

Therefore, the American spirit advocated by Stiglitz and Schopenhauer’s compassion (for the critics) are related… The subject matter is a metaphor of a world, a special moment that condenses the rapidness and slowness of this world…

Completely accidentally, this sentence and XU ZHEN^®‘s new exhibition coincided a century later. Although the artistic medium language and the context used by XU ZHEN^® are different from those of Stiglitz, although these are two sets of aesthetic systems, in XU ZHEN^®‘s new works, we also feel the pure form and the endless historicality which is contained in every moment of time, every folds of sculpture parts and brushstrokes of the painting. The “Passion” series of paintings on the wall allude to weight, and the “Evolution” series of sculptures on the ground are metaphors of time. Such a naming and arrangement seems to have intentionally reversed the order, but at the same time they are organically integrated. At this time, the huge sculptures on the ground seem to express weight, while the “abstract” paintings on the wall seem to represent time. Lightness and heaviness, activity and stillness, superficiality and stateliness, instantaneity and eternality… switch and cycle back and forth here. It is undoubtedly a deep inspection and measurement of both our mental conditions and the symptoms of the contemporary era when staying here.

MadeIn Gallery is pleased to present XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition “Three Taels of Cuteness, One Catty of Greatness” on November 10th, 2021. This is the third solo exhibition of XU ZHEN® at MadeIn Gallery after “Hello” in 2019, which will present a large-scale contemporary artwork Base, and a new painting series “Pas- sion”. The exhibition continues XU ZHEN®’s focus on new technologies, the excess of knowledge and informa- tion, the evolution of human intellect, as well as his ceaseless exploration of the diversity of creative media, with a high degree of sensitivity and new expansion of visual creation in the context of the post-globalization era.

Base is the latest work created for this exhibition. The audience will enter a scene similar to a mobile phone store, where each mobile phone is playing a variety of contents generated in the course of use. While we use mobile phones to capture and process information every day, algorithms and big data continue to generate marketing content and manipulate our behavioral expectations. Increasingly dense and fast information improves our intelligence, but at the same time it does not leave time for individuals to contemplate. On the screen of mobile phone, on the fingers that are hitting keyboard, information economy and technological capitalism occupy more and more the time of life. Perception, sensibility and desire are installed on devices as apps on our mobile phones, which we are constantly tapping on and upgrading.

The entire work takes the life in each device as a fact, an event and new information, and continues to use and announce it. Today, our love, curiosity and beliefs, our bodies, actions and emotions have all become data. How we could be better processed as data, will be the reality of daily life.

“Passion”, a series of paintings with abstract expressionist style on the surface, is not only a derivative of smart social media, but also a representation of daily life on the Internet. They are based on a great invention – screen capture on mobile phone. All pictures are translated from screenshots of WeChat conversation – that is, all kinds of cropped and smeared conversation screenshots that we constantly forward across different WeChat groups every day. Artists retain the “cropping” structure when painting, some can see the “avatar”, while others don’t. The free writing with abstract expressionistic style, not only highlights the traces of “smearing” when forwarding, but also pours all kinds of emotions which are often seen in chatroom into the picture vividly, such as roasting, prattling, arguing, raging, abreaction and the sense of powerlessness. At this time, painting is not so much a fierce reaction to a mental state, but as a release and solution to self-depres- sion, anxiety and excitement. The artist confronts and dispels this unavoidable absurd situation in a more direct way. The exhibition site endows these extra-large scale “mobile phone screenshots” with a unique sense of sacredness – in recent years, screenshots have indeed played an important evidential role in some noted incidents, they are like an invisible spiritual cage, locking everyone’s mind in it with all kinds of informa- tion that is hard to distinguish between genuine and false. This series retains the order of painting, but at the same time, it also completely destroys – or completely ignores – the order of painting.

The exhibition is jointly presented by MadeIn Gallery and ShanghART.

Sorry, this entry is only available in 中文.

International contemporary artist XU ZHEN® – famous for his large-scale works exploring the collision of cultures – will present his first major solo Australian exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in March.

Curated by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION showcases the artist’s work from early videos to more recent monumental sculptures. The exhibition will also celebrate the international debut of “Hello” 2018-19 – a Corinthian column-like snake that watches and follows visitors as they move through the gallery.

Opening on 14 March, the exhibition will be made up of 14 works, as well as a series of performances of In Just a Blink of an Eye 2005/2020 in August. A leader among China’s younger generation of artists, XU ZHEN®’s eclectic works examines the role of art and culture in the distribution of global power.

“A leading artist of his generation, XU ZHEN® grapples with the implications of globalisation, not just in China, but around the world. He deftly combines cultural forms with equal parts provocation and humour, exposing the fault lines between cultures and suggesting new ways of living together,” National Gallery of Australia Director Nick Mitzevich said.

Co-ordinating curator Peter Johnson, from the National Gallery of Australia, said the artist was interested in how globalisation intersected with ideas around the body, alienation, trade, control and the commodification of culture, which saw him establish the MadeIn Company, a factory-like cultural production corporation, in 2009.

“In 2013, MadeIn Company launched the brand XU ZHEN®, skewering the romantic notion of artistic genius and exploring new possibilities for expression through the combination of art and business,” Mr Johnson said.

XU ZHEN® said people in China were anxious about the relationship between art and business but he felt it created new possibilities. “Most things are a business nowadays so the fact of creating a company, in a way, solves the conflict between art and business. The company itself brings together these aspects in a magical way,” he said.

In his latest work, “Hello”, being exhibited outside of China for the first time, XU ZHEN ® turns the spotlight on twisted perceptions that emerge with the meeting of different cultures.

“I’ve used a traditional thing and renewed it in some way,” he said. “It’s interesting because, in the west, such columns would be used in official buildings such as courthouses and banks, whereas they most often appear in front of public baths in China, or places where you can sing karaoke.”

The scale of his homeland, XU ZHEN® says, is one of the inspirations for his colossal works, such as the European Thousand-Armed Classical Sculpture 2014, which has the familiarity of classical European sculptures overlaid with eastern religious imagery of a multi-armed deity. “I’m drawn to such things because of what they say about power and what is valued in different societies,” he said.

On November 6, 2019, MadeIn Gallery will launch XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition “Hello”, marking the second show of the artist’s brand in the gallery after “XU ZHEN Store” was presented in 2016. The exhibition will showcase a monumental kinetic sculpture and a set of newly created two-dimensional works. “Hello” pursues XU ZHEN®’s continuous focus on civilization iteration, fusion, collision as well as the constant exploration of the diversity of creative media, and adheres to the new development and acuteness of visual creation within the context of the post-global era.

“Hello” is a large-scale kinetic sculpture especially created for this exhibition, its form is elaborated from ancient Greek architecture pillars. As viewers stepped into the gallery they will see this large Greek pillar occupying the space such as a magnified and mutated snake, observing its surrounding as if nodding to the visitors. The Greek column symbolizes the origin and cornerstone of Western civilization. The work fuses together the classical Greek column shape and the snake’s aggressive biological attitude to stimulate viewers’ perception and experience on classic civilization. The moment the public’s eyes come across the vivacious Corinthian capital also represents a confrontation with the depth of history and civilization, gazing at each other, evoking Friedrich Nietzsche’s saying “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”. Nowadays, with the increasingly frequent blending and impacts among global civilizations, the work constitutes a reality and metaphor on the encounter between civilizations of different time and space.

“Hello” involves the combination of art and technology at the border between illusion and reality. It proposes a new vision imbued with Western classical aesthetics and cutting-edge robotics, expanding the concept of traditional sculpture.

Also displayed in the exhibition is a group of XU ZHEN®’s latest two-dimensional works “Communication”, consisting of multiple cartoon characters merged into a relief surface. These cartoon characters issued from classic mainstream animations include Mickey Mouse, Angry Birds, Mario Bros., Pikachu, Gingerbread Man, Smurf, Brown Bear, etc. They shape the younger generation’s visual aesthetics. The computer program simulates the fall of each form to the ground, amalgamating them together to compose a superposition of irregular color blocks with a sense of volume, and with a variety of rich, vivid tones and shapes. Using these familiar figurative cartoon images as abstract elements, the works subtlety plays and explores the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, popular culture and conceptual art. The highly saturated color and visual stimuli of the cartoons show through the precise and logical calculation of the computer program the visual trend for wild and rational symbiosis, which also is a characteristic of the digital era.

The Museum of Contemporary Art has acquired a performance piece titled In Just a Blink of an Eye by Chinese artist Xu Zhen. As the museum’s second performance piece in the collection, In Just a Blink of an Eye features a group of performers floating mysteriously in mid-air, defying the constraints of physics as if frozen in time and space.

Installation view of Xu Zhen: In Just a Blink of an Eye, July 27–September 1, 2019 at MOCA Grand Avenue.

Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art.

Photo by Myles Pettengill.

Perrotin Hong Kong is pleased to present the solo exhibition The Glorious by XU ZHEN® from March 25, 2019. It is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, following Civilization Iteration at Perrotin Paris and a subsequent installment at Perrotin Seoul. This show features three of the artist’s signature work series: Under Heaven, Eternity, and Evolution, showcasing a variety of installations, paintings, and sculptures.

“Art is alien.” (XU ZHEN®)

ShanghART Gallery is pleased to present XU ZHEN®’s solo exhibition: “Alien” in May 2018. This exhibition will present the large-scale installations XU ZHEN® made especially for the ShanghART Gallery space, along with his recent paintings and sculptures. This exhibition extends XU ZHEN®’s persistent interest in subjects such as transforming, iterating and evolving the civilisation within the context of post-globalisation. As “Alien” is constructing an impression of the thrilling and the unknown, this exhibition will inspire the viewers’ imagination about future and primitivity.

As the founder of XU ZHEN®, Xu Zhen has made a career in art for twenty years since 1998. Initially expressing the intimacy and emotion of individuals, then shifting to social issues, Xu Zhen is recently focusing on the difference and creativity among human beings. While his artistic strategies have undergone several changes, it is always moving towards the dynamics of culture. XU ZHEN®’s art has reached issues such as how art deals with the passage of time, and how to create new possibilities while discovering new experience. The three main themes in globalisation, “trade and capital”, “conflict and war”, “evolution and variation” are gradually becoming sharp focused in Xu Zhen’s works. Accordingly, the collision among three topics results in the figures of “extreme alienation” and “super variant” in his works. For Xu Zhen, “Alien” is not only a representation of the real world, but also an allegory of the future community.

This exhibition will truly reflect the core of Xu Zhen’s art through exhibiting how he deals with cultural subjects and their contexts, as well as the new associations and plans he came up with under these circumstances. As the most representative art brand of the period, XU ZHEN® is running the one and only MadeIn Company. Established after the economic crisis in 2008, MadeIn Company is representing a kind of possibility by internalising current circumstances into ideas, and speeding up the art making process in the form of a company, in response to the “symptom of globalisaiton”.

The two pieces of sculptures, Alien 1 and Alien 2, can be traced back to the “Eternity” series of 2013, which combines classical figures of Eastern and Western cultures in a conflicting and integrating way. The aesthetic symbols of eternity and spirituality from the East and West has developed through rich metaphors of colonial history, international configurations, and the future of globalisation in the process of collision. Alien 2 in the same vein of Eternity-(Buddha in Nirvana) juxtaposes two sculpture figures: an “hermaphrodite” from Greek mythology and a servant figure from the Han Dynasty. Moreover, Alien 1 is decoding and recombining the cultural elements to its extreme by recolouring those sculptures, thus the ‘aliens’ and the terrifying power therein are released intensely. By these means XU ZHEN® created a spiritually interactive installation, directing the viewers to a sensitive historic moment; the pressure brought on by those ideological symbols will situate the viewers in conditions that force them to make a choice and a statement. The other section of the exhibition includes several paintings used by XU ZHEN® as installing elements. The “Evolution” series which started in 2007 combines the cultural elements from Dunhuang Mogao Cave paintings and African masks. By painting the ancient civilisation and primitivity still remaining in modern society on the canvas at the same time, this series of paintings create the beauty of harmonious blending across time. The “Fortune” series started from the same period of the “Evolution” series; these painting series, which reconstructs the Neolithic ceremonial jades, opens a path for XU ZHEN® towards abstract expressionism.

As “Civilisation Iteration” (solo exhibition in 2017) declares, XU ZHEN® is fulfilling his visions in a progress of repeated feedback. The corporate-typed art production will finally result in a leak in the reality – the unknown condition of getting away from logic and language. The aliens hidden in the exhibition will present infinite possibilities.

Perrotin Seoul is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Xu Zhen, featuring major works spanning the development of his flagship art brand, XU ZHEN®, since 2013.

Using both conceptual and pop strategies, Xu Zhen’s practice mounts incongruous clashes between iconographies pertaining to distant cultures, civilizations and ages to question the loss of context induced by globalization. Ironically mirroring post-Mao China’s journey into consumerism, Xu transforms himself into a brand with the creation of his art corporation “MadeIn Company” in 2009 as a behavioral – and almost performative – study of the symmetries between ideas, art and business.

On display is his signature Under Heaven series, which was featured in the 2014 Armory Show in New York to serve the commercial campaign for the fair. Florae of vibrant colors are skillfully figured using cream piping bags filled with oil colors, evoking the luscious icing on a birthday cake. Fragrant and fragile, joyful and decadent, this subconscious blur of decipherable imagery and extraneous elements alludes to economic growth as a sumptuous, moveable feast – a metaphor for the globalized hedonism in China. Conversely, Xu also sees his pop-like “cake painting” as a collective representation of childhood revelries and excess, a visual referent capable of conjuring each individual’s inner experience. Considered thus, Under Heaven reveals the duality of a sign system at the threshold between principled art and superficial beauty; one which, as Barthes would say, “draws attention to its own arbitrariness – which does not try to palm itself off as “natural” but which, in the very moment of conveying a meaning, communicates something of its own relative, artificial status as well.”[1] This harks back to Xu’s work from the 90’s, a time of ambiguities and conceit amidst political recovery and economic boom. Here, Xu reiterates his interrogation of art – its authority, competence and limitations – vis-à-vis his consciousness of the world in the spirit of Deng Xiaoping’s apocryphal exhortation, “To become rich is glorious”.

Eternity is a series of sculptural installations that amalgamate archetypes of art history and great civilizations. The collision between cultural symbols allows Xu to subtly touch upon the various power struggles in human history, a leitmotif that continues with his more recent canvas series titled Evolution. Embodying the violent nature of cultural hybridization, the pairings of traditional African and Chinese motifs further problematize the loss of meaning and context induced by the precipitation of globalization in the digital era. Here we return to the idea of an arbitrary “sign” – ever elusive to the museum or gallery visitor – which hints at the great divide we are so accustomed to in the age of post-truth and post-Internet where nothing is quite as it seems.

A similar concern with appearance and truth underlies the Metal Language series, wherein phrases from political cartoons are presented in an intensive manner using metal chains applied to a mirroring surface. The graffiti-like composition seemingly celebrates the radical political language it concerns, at the same time as it is betrayed by the extravagance of the metallic gloss. This contradiction plunges the work into a suspended state, halfway between meaningfulness and meaninglessness.

[1] Terry Eagleton. Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008). p. 117

James Cohan will present Movement Field, an exhibition of work by XU ZHEN®️ at the gallery’s Lower East Side location from Saturday, March 3 through Sunday, April 22, 2018. The exhibition will present new sculptures and wall-works alongside the immersive installation Movement Field. This is the fourth solo exhibition of work by XU ZHEN®️ at James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception on Saturday, March 3 from 6-8 PM.

Movement Field is a series of installations initiated in 2013 by XU ZHEN® that act as an ongoing exploration of protest and popular expression. XU ZHEN®️ creates the installations using white pebbles and green grass to create a network of criss-crossing but delineated paths, which diagram the route of several protests throughout the globe. In this exhibition, pathways and sod-covered ramps transform the entire gallery space. The intersecting trails are visually appealing but do not indicate a single way of moving through the space. There is no logical end point. The aesthetic confusion of the trails reflects the frenetic energy – and frequent frustration – of large or small protests. Although the paths are inspired by actual marches, the artist insists that the demonstrations remain unidentified so that no itera