Tendency—Zhang Qikai’s Solo Exhibition
Spatial and Temporal Dimensions in Tendency: Zhang Qikai Solo Exhibition
Text: Sophia Kidd, Co-curator
I think that the way an artist handles space is like the way he handles life. Whereas we enter into space, or live in space in passive ways, an artist like Zhang Qikai sets to transforming it in a very active way. He turns it into a map of his life at the moment. This exhibition, Tendency, is a map of the artist’s mind and body throughout the past months. The paintings Shu Diary (《入蜀之日记》 ) are the most literal maps, the easiest to read, as they are in two dimensions. He painted these paintings each day, as an expression of how he felt being here in this place so far away from his home in Beijing. He also painted Infinite Expansion (《无限的延申》), Emptiness (《虚空》), Wind (《风》)，Rising (《升》)as these kinds of maps of his feelings and thoughts. Zhang Qikai’s installations, however, are much more difficult maps to read. They are spatial, built in three dimensions, such as Eternity (《恒》)and Stone Bones(《石骨》), and so we meet with them as we would with people, sharing space and being affected by them in a much more powerful ways. As there’s more to think about when meeting with these three dimensional artworks, it is more difficult to read them as maps. We must openourselves up to them, allowing our intuition and feelings to guide our understanding.
Many of the artworks in this exhibition, however, are made of not just three, but four dimensions. They are not just spatial, butalso temporal, involving time as large part of the meaning. Ink Stone (《墨石》) is an installation work that records something that happened between ink, paper, water, and stone through a short period of time. Cleaning Stone (《漱石》) then, as a video installation, is also made of time,as well as of materials in three dimensions. This is also true of Relative Staticity (《相对的止》), which even operates like a clock, ticking back and forth, measuring each step we take. Lastly, however,there are two artworks in this exhibition which are maps made out of yet another dimension—the dimension of the viewers’ (your) body and subjectivity. You could say this is a fifth dimension. You, as an audience member, enter into the artwork and join in the making of meaning, in the mapping of meaning. Let us see how this makes you feel, and what it prompts you to think about.
I am very honoured to present to you Tendency (“势”), a solo exhibition of works by artist Zhang Qikai. You will experience time and space in new ways, in not just two or three, or even four dimensions, but in five, and by the end you and the artist will be bonded in ways you never imagined possible.
Tendency—Zhang Qikai’s Solo Exhibition
Project Director: Zhang Yi
Curators: Tian Meng + Sophia Kidd
Coordinators: Li Mingming + Zhang Lan
Reception: 4:00 pm (Sat) Aug 28, 2021
Duration: Aug 28, 2021 thru Oct 17, 2021
Exhibition Venue: Luxehills Art Museum
Hilltop Square of Luxetown No. 18, Section 2, Lushan Avenue, Tianfu NewDistrict, Chengdu, China
Partner: School of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University