Rambles of a Wandering Adaptist

The exhibition revolves around the question:How to outline uncertain spiritual trajectories within the fixed urban grid.Through this theme, artists deconstruct contemporary individuals’ obsession with capital, technology, and sensory stimulation, and activate our collective subconscious about migration, rupture, and desire.

The Beverage series expands Xu Zhen’s attempt to reshape civilizational experience with contemporary concepts, through the cross-contextual rearrangement of distinct visual symbols.

In the sculptures and paintings of this series, ancient Greek columns—symbols of human civilization—are inserted with classic imagery from both Eastern and Western cultures, such as classical sculptures, blue-and-white porcelain vases, scholar’s rocks, and others.As the columns are themselves transformed into straws, these symbols of civilization also estrange and ironize the objects they penetrate, rendering them both anachronistic and contemporary.

Within the everyday action of “sucking”, the artist metaphorizes the various interactions between humanity and civilizations in the post-globalization era:for instance, finding the future in history, or extracting illusions about each other between Eastern and Western civilizations. It further symbolizes the uncertainty and dynamism of contemporary reality.

Day is part of the sculptures Michelangelo created for the Sacristy of the Medici Chapel between 1524 and 1534.This reclining male figure symbolizes daylight.In his work Beverage (Day), Xu Zhen inserts an ancient Greek column into the statue’s head, creating a monologue of intense dramatic tension between the two forms—perhaps self-affirmation and repetition, or self-questioning and dilution.

The work suggests a moment in the post-globalization era when a civilization must confront itself:how to break through the cognitive limitations of the subjective perspective through reflexive gazing, and extract the power of civilization.