Vanguard Gallery is pleased to present the Jiū Society’s exhibition “H2B”, opening on 6 November 2023. As international travel resumes, we invite you to embark on an extraordinary journey of artistic production.
The Jiū Society, an artist collective established in 2015, includes Fang Di, Ji Hao, Jin Haofan, and Zhang Yin, who joined in 2021. Anchored in the Pearl River Delta and the newly coined Greater Bay Area, the group uses the social life since China’s economic reform as a springboard, drawing from mass and popular culture for their visual language. The Jiu Society is known for its use of appropriation, parody, and enactment, crafting scenarios that disrupt traditional relationships through various media, including photography, video, performance, installations, sculptures, and paintings.
Nightmare
New Zealand Wool, Cotton Silk | 125x220cm | 2023
“H2B,” their latest exhibition, examines the art production system, confronting the local predicament of contemporary artistic expression and ideas. The Jiū Society’s members have created a suite of photographic works, re-envisioning religious motifs from European classical painting and allegorical themes from fairy tales and literature. Their work questions the tendency to apply contemporary formal language to classical themes, catering to market demands at the expense of criticality and avant-gardism.
The New Legend
Resinous｜70 x 70 x 90 cm｜2023
In response to this pressing issue, the Jiū Society introduces the “H2B” travel service, designed to broaden the perspectives of contemporary artists through global artistic engagement. In the gallery, the artists have constructed a travel agency setup, offering curated excursions to vibrant and burgeoning art scenes across Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Americas. These interactive installations aim to provoke a reflexive cultural consciousness in the audience. They suggest that in our rapidly evolving world, neither existing experience nor borrowed methodologies can fully re-engage with the discourse of globalized art production or address today’s artistic challenges. Throughout the exhibition, gallery staff will take on the roles of travel agency consultants, guiding visitors to tailor their artistic exploration according to individual preferences. With their distinctively camp aesthetic, the Jiu Society seeks to incite internal reflection and self-critique within the art system. Underneath their humorous and festive veneer, the artists voice their deep-seated concerns about the relevance of contemporary art concepts and language, as well as their own relentless quest to transcend artistic constraints.
ABOUT THE ARTIST | Jiū Society
Jiū Society considers themselves an experimental product of “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: “H2B”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China, 2023; “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: “The New Legent”, Start Museum, Shanghai, China,2023; “Art Within Reach I”, APSMUSEUM, Shanghai, China, 2023; “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; “HOT BLOOD”, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2019; “Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, China, 2018; “Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture”, Shenzhen, China, 2017.
