The title of the exhibition “Another One” comes from the Outsider mentioned by the curatorial team during thediscussion. When the epidemic swept through, the artists both facing and turning back to the surroundings, returned to China, and the brand new circle and state. The vibrant creativity is ready to emerge from their bodies, the desire to express is as strong as the pain of aspiring to be recognized, intentionally or spontaneously, the sharp and soft positive-negative spaces, the collision of strong colors, the powerless and high-pitched echoes, the exploration of time-space of the finite and the infinite, plays in a melody that is both contradictory and harmonious in their works.
What is inside? What about outside? The vocabulary constructs an invisible boundary, which is between this world and out of the world, between peoples, between matters, and between the real and the virtual. In fact, we can split things with a boundary. It is a bit like the gear-like language of Gypsy, also like Chen Mo weaving time-space into a web. What they want to say is: Is there really such a boundary?
Hard to say since when, the names of different generations in China are post-60s, post-70s, post-80s, post-90sand post-00s. 10 years is a unit of different generations. In European and American terms, 20 years is usually used as a unit. Generation X refers to people born in the 1960s and 1970s, usually characterized by a tendency of individualism; Generation Y is a group of people born in the 1980s and 1990s, and their values are usually more inclined to liberalism; and Generation Z grew up with the Internet world. Generations in Japan are divided into the clump generation, the Bubble Generation (born in the 1960s), the Employment Ice Age Generation (born in the 1970s and 1980s), the Relaxed Education Generation (born from 1987 to 2004), and the Z generation (born after 2005). Japanese standard of division is inclined to the socio-political and economic backdrop.
Among the world’s 7 billion people, Generation Z has 1.9 billion people, accounting for about one-third of the population. They are born with IT, also known as the electronic IT generation. The daily life of this generation
is inseparable from WeChat, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc., and it is difficult for them to imagine a life without the Internet. However, the complexity of human beings, the sense of reversal brought by this getting
faster and faster, the shadow of cultural and economic prosperity is always filled with poetic emptiness. There are many people who slow down under self-awareness, and there are people who even run away from the
crowd and go back. In the end, there may be no distinction between before and after. Even in the era of rapid consumption and information overload, they have gone through satisfying journeys and possessed the cheers of lonely people. They are also “dissonant, weird, abrupt” in it. To become another
self, pay attention to language, pay attention to behavior, pay attention to limit, pay attention to morality, pay attention to what you need to pay attention to. The “self and another self” is also unique and has nothing to do
with the outside. The concave and convex are very simple and vivid images like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When spliced together, they are seamlessly integrated into one. In fact, they are originally a whole piece, and the boundary is defined by self-definition. Just like the four young artists in this group exhibition, each of them has their own style, but when presented as a whole group exhibition, self-expression goes to its origin, which is actually the
same language. We hope our world could be “You have me, I have you”. As an individual, when we face any other person, we can see another self. The state of “roamer” could be narrator and observer wandering in the modern city, a strategy for expressing inner voices. The narrator and observer take the urban landscape, and the real and virtual worlds as a paradise with a pure heart to enjoy it, which is purposeless, unmotivated, uncaused rebellion, driven only by his senses. The perfect roamer is also an enthusiastic bystander, crowds are their important element, in endless wandering, they establish their own habitat. In Feng Yilun’s photography, the momentary light and shadow, people
and environment, weave into wonderful poetry and disappointment. And Shi Yiqun’s works always show a slight cunning under the warm romance, which is his unique look when he is looking for “another one”. Just as a wandering soul seeks a sojourn, roamer will also enter any other body that he wishes to enter. The self is sometimes the “other”, seeking “another one”, It is also for individualistic “concave and convex”.
For Benjamin, the environment of the modern city evokes memories of the past, not simply nostalgia, but critical knowledge. A shared collective space in which the conscious and the unconscious, past and present, all meet, and present between the constantly flowing present and the visible and weighted past.
This is an era in which behavior is ahead and the system lags behind. From the Internet to digital currency, to NFT and Metaverse, changes in the world quietly entered our lives when the whole world was swept by the epidemic. In the vague understanding, people are afraid that they will not be able to catch up with this wave, and rush to this brand-new train, but do not know where the train will go. It’s also a ridiculous time. It’s psychedelic, contradictory, and absurd. We cannot escape. And all of these also wander freely and willfully in artists’ works.
Unconsciously, people in the Z era have vigorously been expressing the confusion, excitement, and silence that the era suddenly brought to them. In the world of Metaverse, can the real you and the real me, my Avatar and your Avatar, be able to make friends with each other? Everything is just beginning, whether it is fear or fun, depends on how you face it. A “concave and convex” space and time.