{{sindex}}/{{bigImglist.length}}

daSein Exhibition | Objective Objects

{{newsData.publisher_name}} {{newsData.update_time}} 浏览：{{newsData.view_count}}

来源 | {{newsData.source}} 作者 | {{newsData.author}}

daSein Exhibition | Objective Objects 崇真艺客

Gallery daSein is greatly honored to present the group exhibition “Objective Objects” with artists Josephine Baker, Enej Gala, Guan Xiao, Liang Yuanwei and Stella Zhong.

The exhibition will open on March 20th, 15:00 and will run until June 23rd, 2024.

“…by electrons, x-rays, rocks, flowers, icicles, comets, and animals, as well as by musicians, scientists, copper mines, monasteries, and bombs. These stock characters scattered across the planet cannot help but affect each other: they enjoy or fear, block or destroy one another. “

— Graham Harman

If the world was a theatre populated with countless objects, some of these objects are invariably performative, complex, and full of possibilities through the course of human cultivation and creation. Whether they are natural or artificial, anthropomorphic or non-anthropomorphic, they are all what Bruno Latour calls “actors/actants”, collectively involved in the weaving of a colossal network. Yet, amidst the process of constructing systems in aesthetics, production, cultural memory and historical changes, there are particular concepts, behaviours and intentions obscured within the interrelationship between objects in the East and the West.

Nature as objects — Pliny the Elder’s definition of Natural History generally refers to the characteristics and traits of things, classifying an objective natural world distinct from human beings through observing the growth and forms of plants, thus deriving a fundamental structure in primordial aesthetics. In the distant ancient times of the East, different from the study of Natural History, Zhuangzi viewed nature with cognitive influence and speculative perspectives, as he wrote to “allow all things to take their natural course without any personal motives”. Objects have both tangible and intangible qualities. In this context, nature is conceptualised as a quasi-object that has been anthropomorphised, existing in relation to humans as quasi-subject, and has its own appearances and manifestations.

Man-made objects — Humans derive aesthetics from their imagination of nature, which are then reflected in the objects they produce, carrying various significances and allusions. Through continual process of artistic creation, the viewer’s subjective aesthetic aspects are disengaged and projected onto objects, These man-made objects and material advancements, in turn, shape and condition human perceptions, acting as enduring testaments to society and civilisation, unceasingly expanding and reproducing.

A combination of methods—correlating and macroscopic viewing—is used in anthropology to explore societies and interdisciplinary expertise, establishing ongoing connections, correlations, and retrospective analyses of human societies. It posits that man-made constructs, along with their creation and manifestation of “culture”, are considered equal matters to what is typically recognised as “nature”, asserting that the two are inseparably interconnected. Regardless of whether it is natural or man-made, every object possesses their distinctive inherent geographical narratives and features. Amalgams of concepts flow in the course of geographical dynamics, fluctuating the context of objects and matter, and hence interweaving the notion of nature and culture. In the Eastern setting, the differentiation between objects and matter has always been determined by its linguistic context, and individuals traverse between these two realms. By reassessing the perspective of previously detached components as an ever-growing, merging, and evolving unity, one is “embracing the Tao, reflecting the nature of objects, clarifying the mind to savour their essence,” and moreover, “spiritually connecting with heaven and earth”.

In Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures, Graham Harman illustrates a time he “walk[s] across a bridge…adrift in a world of equipment: the girders and pylons that support me, the durable power of concrete beneath my feet, the dense unyielding grain of the topsoil in which the bridge is rooted. What looks at first like the simple and trivial act of walking is actually embedded in the most intricate web of tool-pieces, tiny implanted devices watching over our activity, sustaining or resisting our efforts like transparent ghosts or angels.” Through a multi-faceted anthropological approach, the Eastern way of perceiving objects in the present resonates more with Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory. Eastern and Western philosophy intersect as they question modernity, and this collision between objects generates new pathways and evolution. As one of the key initiators of the speculative realism movement, Harman has consistently endeavoured to investigate and uncover the boundless nature of objects. Resembling the intentionality of simulated environments found in Eastern gardens, everything is intertwined and naturally in order.

Josephine Baker (b.1990, London, UK), currently lives and works in London. She completed her undergraduate BA at Central Saint Martins (London) in 2012, and her postgraduate diploma in 2017 from the Royal Academy Schools, London. Through sculptures, installations and drawings, the works of Josephine Baker resides in the crossovers between human infrastructure and the natural world. Industrial materials are reconfigured and reimagined in her studio into fictitious landscapes along with the creatures, weather patterns and phenomena that traverse them. Baker’s practice focuses on exploring how materials can become physical stories of the economic, ideological or anthropocentric forces that have played a part in their production processes – from agriculture to resource extraction, geopolitics to gardening. Immersing viewers in microclimates of communication, the assemblages that make up her work are attempts to reveal the historical realities of their elements: raw materials react to their consumer-product futures; landscaping tools take on animal forms; and representations of pristine nature confront their role within territorial worldviews.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Water-resistance, St. Chads, London (2023); Outfallers, Nir Altman, Munich (2022); Frieze London Focus Section solo presentation (2022); Clear Out the Wounds Closest To the Sun, V.O. Curations, London (2021); The Land Lies, ChertLüdde, Berlin (2020). Her work has been included in exhibitions at the British Museum, the Drawing Room (London), Pippy Houldsworth (London), Sundy (London), Love Unlimited (Glasgow), among others. She is an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London, since 2020. Her book Submarines, produced in collaboration with writer M. Ty, was published in 2022.

Enej Gala (b.1990, Ljubljana, Slovenia) lives and works between London, Venice and Nova Gorica. In 2013 he accomplishes his B.A. and in 2015 his M.A. in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, in the meantime he exchanged at the William De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2014. Graduated from Royal Academy Schools Postgraduate Programme in London 2019-2023. His practice is based on an acute awareness of thinking through making and attempting to grasp the experience of otherness. Puppetry is used as a lens to focus on materials as entities, expanding their potential by exposing and building on their intrinsic qualities. This process questions traditional perspectives on art, craftsmanship, installation, performance and different forms of production.

Recent solo exhibitions include: The invention of footsteps, Almanac, Turin (2023); Saving chewing gums from mammoth's hair, TJ Boulting, London (2023) and 'Nevereverevereverevereverever learn', Aplusa gallery, Venice (2022). Group exhibitions include 'Lapsus Calami', Marlborough gallery, London (2023-24); Hôtel-Dieu, Aplusa Gallery, Venice (2023); 'It's the sea gone with the sun', ALMANAC Iceland rd, London (2023); 'Melt', Euston Road, London (2023); Fondazione Malutta in Spazio, Spazio Contemporanea, Brescia, (2023); 'Fever Dream', Galerija MK, Zagreb (2023); 'Les guerriers, les loups et l'enfant', Moonens Foundation, Bruxelles (2023); RA Degree Show, RAS Postgraduate Program, Royal Academy, London, (2023); 'Camminando sul ciglio di un instante', Shaelyn Hanes, Eunice Tsang, YCRP FSRR Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2022); 'Who killed Bamby?, Dolomiti Contemporanee, Nuovo Spazio di Casso,Casso (2022); 'Surreal and the real', debut exhibition by W.H.Y. Art Gallery Hong Kong, China (2022); 'Ghostly like traces', Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London (2022). Gala was the winner of Xenia residency award, Bow Arts Alcamantar RAW studio award, Wolfson College Cambridge RAS Graduate Prize andGilbert Bayes Scholarship Award – for sculpture 2023.

Guan Xiao (b. 1983, Chongqing, China) currently lives and works in Beijing. Guan takes a playful approach to her sculpture, video, and installation artworks. She creates a visual language that breaks through historical and cultural boundaries by establishing diverse relationships between a variety of rich materials, using collage to fuse classical art language with industrial manufacturing civilization to build a unique form of contemporary art.

Guan Xiao has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at important institutions worldwide including Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2023); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2022); The 34th Bienal de São Paulo: Though It's Dark, Still I Sing, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); X Museum Triennial 1st Edition: How Do We Begin?, X Museum, Beijing, China (2020); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (Solo, 2019); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, US (Solo, 2019); Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland (Solo, 2018); The 57th Venice Biennal: Viva Arte Viva, Venice, Italy (2017); Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (Solo, 2016); Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, UK (Solo, 2016); The 13th Lyon Biennal: La vie moderne, Lyon, France (2015); New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum, New York, US (2015) and among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions, such as the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art (MUDAM), Luxembourg; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany; Boros Collection, Berlin, Germany; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, China; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; New Century Art Foundation, Beijing, China and among others.

Liang Yuanwei (b. 1977, Xi'an, China), currently works and lives in Beijing. She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (China), where she received her BA in 1999 and MA in 2004. She currently lives and works in Beijing. As one of the new generations brought up under globalization, Liang explores the experience of adapting oneself to the transformations. The artist situates the personal and the quotidian in her theoretical framework while thriving for detailed ways of expression and investigations into the dialectical relationship between concept and form. Rich in references from different resources, her canvas has been transformed in both the repetitive system of the construction of space and in the gesture: it turns out to be more like a piece of writing or a code.

Liang Yuanwei participated in China Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Her solo exhibitions were held at Palazzo Pisani-Conservatorio de Musica (Venice), Beijing Commune (Beijing), Hunan Museum (Changsha), OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an (Xi’an), Pace London (London), Taikang Space (Beijing), etc. Her works have been exhibited in M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Red Brick Museum (Beijing), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), CAFA Art Museum(Beijing), Long Museum (Shanghai), Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa), Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg (Saint Petersburg), Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Amsterdam), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley), Kunstmuseum Bern (Bern), and Foundation Joan Miró (Barcelona) among others. Her works have been featured in publications such as Great Women Painters (Phaidon, 2022), The Chinese Art Book (Phaidon, 2013), Vitamin P2 (Phaidon, 2011), and Younger than Jesus (Phaidon, 2009). Her works also have been collected by the CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), M+ Sigg Collection (Hong Kong), De Ying Foundation (Hong Kong), the UBS Art Collection (Zürich), G Museum (Nanjing), Sifang Museum (Nanjing), Longlati Foundation (Shanghai), Long Museum (Shanghai), Fosun Foundation (Shanghai), White Rabbit Collection (Australia), Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris), De Heus Collection (the Netherlands), DSL Collection (France), etc.

Stella Zhong (b. 1993, Shenzhen, China) currently lives and works in New York, NY. She holds a BFA in Glass from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. Zhong's works persistently evoke a sense of ambiguity and humor, playful yet incisive. Through large-scale installations, sculptures, videos, and paintings, she constructs vast and desolate environments where barely visible, nonconforming objects are concealed in the periphery. Through these acute scale shifts, each of Zhong’s enigmatic worlds is calibrated to a condition to observe the potential power of the small and moments where intimacy and alienation converge.

Zhong has had solo exhibitions at Chapter NY, New York; Fanta-MLN, Milan; Adams and Ollman, Portland; and Guan Shan Yue Art Museum, Shenzhen; among others. Zhong has exhibited internationally at SculptureCenter, Queens, NY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Galerie Marguo, Paris; in lieu, Los Angeles, CA; Peana, Mexico City; YveYANG, New York; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City; HUA International, Beijing; and more. Her work has been reviewed on FlashArt, ArtAsiaPacific, Mousse Magazine, Texte zur Kunst, The New York Times, Art in America, among others. In 2024, Zhong will have solo exhibitions at The Intermission, Piraeus, GRC and Antenna Space, Shanghai, CHN.