Curator’s Notes｜On Behalf Of

2021/3

I believe that exhibition is a kind of chemical reaction, where the space, arrangement, objects and things interact with each other, and walking in it, the external scene is mapped on the sensory and psychological level of the viewer. Rather than displaying works in a clean and tidy white cube space, I prefer to break the boundary between behind the scenes and in front of the stage, and invite the creators of the works to come to the site, leaving traces and smells. On Behalf Of is such an exhibition that wants to portray a group of artists.

What is your representation? This is a question that every artist is asked, and it carries the curiosity and quickness of a tourist tour. The answer is also often accompanied by theatrical and romantic lore in order to satisfy the needs of the viewer. Artists do not hold the power to decide their own representations; such combing and sifting occurs after the termination of their creative career, so the scope of the selection of representation is always toward the past, reasoning forward. Is it possible to make a joke about using representation as a starting point for creative work to unfold? The word becomes a blessing here, a wish for a rising representative work in the unknown future.

Another meaning of representation in the exhibition comes from the fact that when deciding on the English title, I chose On Behalf Of, which translates directly to representation. Does the artist represent himself, or does the work represent the artist, or does the exhibition represent our state of being? It is not a verb with a clear direction, but becomes the thread in the middle of the connecting question, strung at random in the exhibition. The first thing you can do when you enter is to sit down in the green rest area created by Zhong Yunshu. The original intention was to “embarrass the audience with boring works”, but such a relaxing and comfortable place makes even the embarrassment cute. The walls are covered with random graffiti, the environment is filled with the playful conversations of the artists in the video, and even the scaffolding is used as a device to hang the video. The first impression of this exhibition is chaos.

Chaos and order are the two banks of the river. We always swim in the river, careful not to strand ourselves on the shore, but the sensory impact of the exhibition’s visual chaos is to shoot the audience directly to the shore. Order is hidden behind the curtain, just like Xiao Wan, a staff member of Qiao Space who helped design the posters, happened to have a birthday on the opening day, and the poster he made had a cake on it. Li Ming placed eighteen cakes at the opening, and the neatly organized snow-white cream became the material for the artists to smash around before the candles burned out. Order needs to be destroyed, and a force rushes out from the destruction, leaving traces that are the breath of the exhibition.

The destruction doesn’t stop outside the exhibition hall either, as Yang Jian’s Dear Sandra pried open the floor of Joe’s space and dug a large pit in which groundwater was almost visible. The pit was ultimately used to bury the work next to it, and behind it is a story of farewell and sharing. Perhaps the best way to say goodbye is to fully enjoy the fruits of the past brought to the present. On the opposite side hangs a painting by Zheng Haozhong, a piece of the canvas is torn and there are many traces of children’s drawings on it. Coincidentally, several of the paintings in this exhibition were naughtily painted on different materials, from Song Yuan Yuan’s TESSAR to Shen Han’s On Behalf Of 2021 to Li Weiyi’s Stealing the Master and Tang Dixin’s Painting Together, the paintings were destroyed so freely and returned to innocence.

There are so many stories to tell in this exhibition, about the works, that happened at the time of the exhibition. Li Binyuan recreated an artist’s adventure based on the stories in the exhibition, choreographed in a witty absurdity. Hu Qiangqian invited the exhibiting artists to sit in front of the desks and chairs arranged as a classroom to reminisce about their student days, their years of innocence. Liang Zi is forever pushing his limits, placing on the wall performance pieces that he will continue in recent months until the end of the exhibition. Next to it, Liu Xinyi’s video features a first-perspective shot of a small robot constantly hitting its opponent, like a grievance and counterattack against all the previous year. Ge Yulu imitated Li Liao’s performance A Note of Wuhan and reproduced A Note of Li Liao. Li Liao himself appeared in his new work Do You Feel Happy, a video surrounded by three walls in a small black room, so that the audience was surrounded by the artist’s face as soon as they entered, and a certain awkwardness and curiosity came over them. It is quite happy to show oneself without having to please anyone.

If you stand in the middle of the exhibition hall and look around, you may suddenly feel eerie. In the corner of the inner wall sits an abstract skeleton that looks like it has been sunken into the ocean floor and weathered for years, this is Zheng Huan’s sculpture Green Eyebrows. At the center of the exhibition hall is Zhou Yilun’s work, the three crosses are nailed not to Jesus, but to Nike hats. Save the market is to save the world, buy buy buy dissipate the commodities of the rest of the nails on the cross exposed. In Linke’s Moon Video under the illumination, this is the nail coffin nails revealed, the trend of consumption under the horrible face, only “buy” can be revealed. How the final sales of the hat, have to wait and see.

“People want to show their own image through action, but this image does not resemble him.” Sending out the desire to complete the masterpiece, there is no way to prove where the final destination actually falls, because the map always lags behind the location. Depending on the title of the exhibition to represent as a spell, the exhibition enchanted in this way is like a sword fight on Mount Hua, and after the duel of masters, it is simply a mess.