Group Exhibition ShanghART SUHE, Shanghai
Exhibition Name: Bodyscapes in Motion
Academic Advisor: Li Suchao
Artists: Ge Hui, Xie Kun, Shao Yuxuan, Gao Yingpu, Wang Qiqi, Jiang Xiaoyu
Exhibition Date: 2024/11/8-12/1 (Weds. - Sat. 11:30-18:00, Sun. - Tues. By Appointment)
Location: ShanghART SUHE 204, 2/F, 30 Wen'an Road, Jiang'an, Shanghai
The newly established ShanghART SUHE Space will present its inaugural exhibition, Bodyscapes in Motion, opening on November 8, 2024. This group exhibition gathers works by six young artists — Wang Qiqi, Gao Yingpu, Xie Kun, Jiang Xiaoyu, Shao Yuxuan, and Ge Hui — who use painting as medium to explore unique interpretations of contemporary individuals and their bodily landscapes. The exhibition aims to examine how the body, amidst a constantly flowing and changing present, becomes an agent of expressing existence and emotion, as well as a junction where the soul and the flesh merge and diverge.
The “bodyscape” portrayed in these paintings is not merely a representation of the body but an exploration of its fragility and susceptibility as it engages with the external and internal, the self and the other. Wang Qiqi’s series Replica of the Body depicts the uncanny of human bodies fragmented, using thin, flat colors and precise incisions to stir the chaotic forces within. Gao Yingpu, on the other hand, often constructs a collective portrait by applying dark tones and a sense of movement, illustrating a near-"delirious" state in the Foucauldian sense amid the nomadism of identity, culture, and place. “Delirium exists in every fluctuation of the mind,” and these mental fluctuations, directly or indirectly, reflected in the body and in perceptions of it, can be seen in the struggle and hysteria of the crowd as depicted in Muddy Soil (2023).
Xie Kun’s paintings render a reality that is both illusory and absurd on a visual level, with exaggerated body language and radiant, blurred lighting responding to the simulated world created by today’s digital media. Meanwhile, the body can also appear simple and humorous; Jiang Xiaoyu uses concise lines and vibrant fluorescent colors to depict vivid yet bizarrely mutable figures. His works often feature alienated bodies, where a comical, eccentric appearance masks an underlying fragility.
As a member of Generation Z, Shao Yuxuan translates his experiences immersed in the information age into paintings that parody the internet landscape. He often juxtaposes AI-generated figures with texts to create images that resemble the viral memes spreading in the digital world. Ge Hui’s works focus on surreal landscapes, as seen in Big Fish (2021-2023) and An Unprepared Story—Calf Elephant (2018-2024), where the intertextuality between human subjects and flora and fauna, along with multi-centered compositions, suggests a new order of viewing within the painting and the body's extension as a subject of perception.
“The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego” (Freud 1923 [1962: 26]). The body has never been a static, inert, or mind-separated object. Instead, it is a constantly self-performing presence, continuously reshaped and extended through interactions with the external world and the psyche. The artists in this exhibition exhibit a keen interest and subtle awareness of this dynamic, allowing us to see how individual consciousness, emotions, and collective experiences flow and settle within the body, as revealed through varied contours of the flesh and the ever-evolving, imagined bodyscapes. (Text/Li Suchao)
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