The new exhibition of DEJI Art Museum: “Nián Nián: The Power and Agency of Animal Forms” is now open. The exhibition brings together 59 representative works by 33 leading international artists from across borders, generations and media, covering a wide range of forms including oil painting, sculpture, video, installation and cross-media, etc. Through the perspectives of contemporary artists, the exhibition allows viewers to see the decomposition and flow of living beings and re-examine the position of human beings in the natural world. Through different forms of unique artistic language, they also explore how life force is constructed in art.
Tang Chao, Zhu Changquan, Yi Xin Tong and Jiu Society present a number of works in this exhibition, including video, installation and sculpture.
INSTALLATION VIEW
Tang Chao
Mind Movie: A Horror Story
Photography, 200 pieces ｜29.7 x 22.23cm ｜ 2022
(Photos courtesy of DEJI Art Museum)
Zhu Changquan
I’m Disguised, Right in front of You
Video, dual channel ｜3840x2160p｜10’00”
(Photos courtesy of DEJI Art Museum)
Dark, Beyond Deep
Digital simulation video, dual screen, dual channel｜1920x1080px2｜17’40’’
(Photos courtesy of DEJI Art Museum)
Yi Xin Tong
The Birth of Julung-julung: The Aquatic Dragon
HD video with sound｜24’52”｜ 2019-21
(Photos courtesy of DEJI Art Museum)
Jiu Society
Bullshit Blind Bull
Glass fiber reinforced plastics, sound installation｜248×136.5x233cm｜2018
(Photos courtesy of DEJI Art Museum)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tang Chao
Tang Chao is among the natives of China’s open internet era around the millennium, and established his practice following the era of image explosion in the 2010s. His recent works involve video, performance, and digital drawing. On one hand, Tang Chao employs the graphic heritage across analog and digital ages, developing it into his unique set of vocabulary and grammar. He re-exams and embraces Asian popular culture, including the icons and narratives of games, comics, animation, and films, while reflecting on their history and value in the global visual culture. On the other hand, he dives into the intersected realms of physical reality, analog signal, and virtual simulation, and use them as the site of performance and extension of bodies. Leaping back and forth among the hybrid realities, his works create bubbles of situations, interactions, and storytelling. Taking forms in video, installation, performance, and digital drawings, Tang Chao transforms symptoms of our time into poetic and mythical narratives.
His recent exhibitions include: “Out of Sync”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2022); “Nights after Days”, The Store, Seoul, Korea (2022); “Nonphysical: Shimmer (online project)”, Vanguard gallery, Shanghai, China (2021); “From Lack to Light” (2017) took place at Vanguard gallery, Shanghai. His works were featured in the following group exhibitions:”Year by Year, DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing, China(2023); “The Pieces I Am”, UCCA Edge, Shanghai, China (2022); “Night Dimension: Night as Prelude”, UCCA Edge, Shanghai, China (2022); “Within Space – Time, We Walk Through Images”, Glow Shenzhen 2021 – Futian, Shenzhen, China (2021); “Emerging Media Artist Exhibition Un/Conventional”, OCAT Shanghai, China (2020); “Play Socieities: wolves, lynx and ants”, Hyundai Motorstudio, Beijing, China (2020); “In a Half of Maze”, CAA Art Museum, Hangzhou, China (2019); “Sooner/Later”, SNAP, Shanghai, China (2019); “Incandescence”, BIG SPACE x Chino Gallery, Shanghai, China (2019); “The Time That Remains—Room No.6”, Grey Cube, Goethe Institut China, Beijing, China (2018); “Questioning Photography Now”, GCA, Chongqing, China (2018); “Pity Party”, Sleepcenter, New York, USA (2018); “Indoors Universe”: the 5th Huayu Youth Award, Huayu Art Center, Sanya, China (2017); “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth glancing at”, Beijing Commune, Beijing, China (2017); Spain Moving Image Festival, Madrid, Spain (2017).
Zhu Changquan
Zhu Changquan’s creation came from the analysis of people’s daily lives. He wants to analyze the influence of a variety of potential factors in daily behaviors to reveal the rules underneath. He believes that the effectiveness of image does not originate from its significance carried, but due to their potential strength, which can release the audiences’ own experience. Also, it can work more consciously in this big social machine. He thinks development of anything is not single linear, “All-factors Image Narratives” is the artist’s understanding of image creation, which is to generate a new narrative form with images and everyday objects in the space through drama, animation, installations and painting.
His recent solo exhibitions include: “Murmur”, The Store, Seoul, South Korea(2022); Nanjing Art Fair International, Nanjing, China(2022); “Wild Cursive”, Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China (2020); “Zhu Changquan: A History of an Action, 2019”, Avenida da Nave Desportiva, Cotai, Macau (2019); “A History of an Action”, OCAT Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2018); “A Head without a Brain”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2017). The recent group exhibitions he attende include:”Year by Year, DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing, China(2023); “Durational”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2021); “Audiovisual Obstructions”, PPPP Space, Beijing, China (2019); “The exhibition of annual of contemporary art of China 2018”, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China (2019); “New Video in China—New Attitude since 2010”, Chengdu, China (2018); “The Post Southern Song Dyansty”, KWM Art Center, Beijing, China (2018); “PITY PARTY”, Sleepcenter, New York, USA (2018); The 5th Huayu Youth Award, Huayu Art Center, Sanya, China (2017); “The New Normal: China, Art, and 2017”, UCCA, Beijing, China (2017).
Yi Xin Tong
Yi Xin Tong creates objects, moving images, and sound to understand himself, to study human culture’s dynamic relationship with nature, and with a wry sense of humor, to intervene in societal beliefs in value, decency, and rationality. Yi Xin Tong is like a wanderer and scavenger in the city, collecting fragments of daily life and transforming them into poems. Fascinated by things with a sense of adventure, romance and absurdity, Tong creates without restraint nor pursues formal refinement, while his works prove to be delicately arranged, ordinary in appearance but poetic in essence.
His recent solo projects include: Petrified Seas, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2022)；Environnment, Mon Amour, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2022);“World River Atlas”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2020); “The Attraction Show—Origin of Ripples”, Snarte Space, Nanchang, China (2019); “Going Outside”, Nanhai Art, Millbrae, California, USA (2018). He also attended the following group exhibitions: ”Year by Year, DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing, China(2023); 2022 Beijing Biennial, National base for international cultural trade, Beijing, China(2022); “Multispecies Clouds”, Macalline Art Center, Beijing, China(2022); “Liquid Ground”, UCCA Dune, Hebei, China(2022); “Beast”, Chimera, Kin, Hessel Museum of Art, New York, USA (2022);“Boomerang – OCAT Biennale 2021”, OCT Art &Design Gallery, Shenzhen, China (2021); “Liquid Ground”, Para Site, Hong Kong, China (2021); “Durational”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2021); “Being in the Void”, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China (2021); “From Checkers to Complex Systems”, Times Art Museum, Chengdu, China (2021); “Meditations in an Emergency”, UCCA, Beijing, China (2020) “BRIC Biennial III”, BRIC House, Brooklyn, USA (2019); “Guangzhou Airport Biennale”, Guangzhou, China (2019); “Disaster of Extra Epic Proportions”, curated by Alvin Li, chi K11 art museum, Shanghai, China (2019); “Long March Project: The Deficit Faction”, Long March Space, Beijing, China (2019); “Adrift”, Chambers Fine Art, New York, USA (2019); “Long Day”, Aranya Art Centre, Qinhuangdao, China (2019); “To Speculate, Of Nature”, NanHai Art, Millbrae, USA (2019); “Shadow as a Stain”, ACRE, Chicago, USA (2018); “Yanping Art Harvest in the Village”, Jiulong Village, China (2018); “Practice: in Progress”, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, USA (2018); “Life and Revolution, Landscape of Huangshan and Lushan”, Taikang Space Beijing China (2018).
Jiū Society
Jiū Society considers themselves an experimental product of China’s “Reform and Opening Up”, and also the sons of “dispersed culture.” In the name of nonsensical hedonism, despite occasional anxieties and doubts, Jiū feels very good. So they tried to make themselves heard by making an uncertain and small sound, Jiū. Founded in 2015 by three Shenzhen-born artists, Fang Di, Ji Hao, and Jin Haofan, Jiū Society absorbed its fourth member, the Guangzhou-born artist Zhang Yin, in 2021. The group revolves around the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area, a brand-new region forged by the Party and the people where the four artists all grew up and witnessed wave after wave of immigration, fortune and ideas. Jiū Society expects to shake up a few things in this new reality, and turns up their volume by just a bit.
Jiū Society was founded in 2015 in Shenzhen. Their recent solo exhibitions include: “Snow White & Her Seven Friends”, ART SG 2023, Vanguard Gallery booth, Singapore (2022); “Snow White & Her Seven Friends”, Studio Concrete, Seoul, South Korean (2022); “Lost in Shanghai”, SYSTEM, Shanghai, China (2021) ; “Your Life, My Dream”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2020); “Your Life, My Dream”, OCT Boxes Art Museum, Foshan, China (2020); “Lost in Shenzhen”, the Center for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK (2019); “GAS STATION IX: da qi da luo”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2017); “Lost in Shenzhen”, 33 Artspace, Shenzhen, China (2016). They also attended the following group exhibitions:”Year by Year, DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing, China(2023); “Warehouse Story VIII — On Your Mark!”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2022); “Huayu Youth Award Finalist Exhibition 2021, The Perfect Flaw”, Sanya Art Center, Sanya, China (2021);“How do we begin”, X Museum, Beijing, China (2020); “HOT FLOWS–Pearl River Delta Arts Retrospective in Macau”, Post-Ox Warehouse Experimental Site, Macau, China (2019); “Not for the faint of heart”, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2019); “Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, China (2018); “Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture”, Shenzhen, China (2017). Their works have been collected by: Sigg collection, Lucerne, Switzerland; White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, Australia; APS Museum, Shanghai, China; Contemporary Gallery Kunming, Kunming, China, etc
