XU ZHEN

Perrotin Hong Kong is pleased to present the solo exhibition The
Glorious by XU ZHEN® from March 25, 2019. It is the artist’s third
solo exhibition with the gallery, following Civilization Iteration at
Perrotin Paris and a subsequent installment at Perrotin Seoul. This
show will feature three of the artist’s signature work series: Under
Heaven, Eternity, and Evolution, showcasing a variety of installations,
paintings, and sculptures. Since the founding of MadeIn Company
in 2009, XU ZHEN® has produced works as a brand, utilizing
modern production mechanisms to tackle the current plight of art
amidst globalization and capitalization. By juxtaposing classical
elements of civilization throughout human history and making them
collide, the artist resuscitates visual experience in everyday life and
prevalent symbols of art history, enabling spectators to interpret a
host of issues — the value of art, clashes of culture, geopolitics — in
a different light.
Under Heaven-Gold, on show in this exhibition, is a brand-new revamp
of an existing series, Under Heaven, in which bright-colored pigments are densely and profusely applied onto the canvas using cream piping
bags, resulting in baroque-style squiggles and swirls that evoke a
carnivalesque revelry in a realm under heaven conjured by the artist.
This series has been a familiar sight to many since shown as the visual
centerpiece of the 2014 Armory Show in New York. XU ZHEN®
consistently employs readily digestible artistic experiences, which
take on a satirical function as metaphors for modern society’s
excessive consumerism and explore the limits of commodifying art.
Revealed in other chromatic installments of the Under Heaven series
is the collusion between sensualism and commercialization. This Gold
series, despite its use of the most opulent color known to man,
irradiates a dignified and profound beauty. The black walls of the
exhibition space incarnate Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s dense shadows; the
gold submerges into darkness, but still emits a solemn sheen, even in
places where the sun cannot reach. The Glorious, the exhibition’s title,
refers to the dazzling glare of Under Heaven-Gold as well as the
accomplishment and wealth symbolized by works of art.
As some of the most representative series of works by XU ZHEN®,
Eternity and Evolution follow through an examination of geoculture.
Eternity takes inspiration from the headless statues found in China
and the West. By reproducing and grafting these statues — symbols
of mankind’s triumph — together, the artist provides a new civilizational
paradigm for the relationship between violence and the sublime,
confrontation and coexistence, and dilapidation and imperishability.
The juxtaposition of both regional statues not only alludes to art history
and its manmade nomenclature, but also mankind’s colonial past, and
within the work, irreconcilable differences appear to gradually crumble
and dissipate. The Evolution series develops out of the Eternity series,
and although they stem from different spatio-temporal contexts, both exhibit cultural disparity against a global backdrop. Evolution further
extends its creative tentacles to primitive art situated on the threshold
of mainstream culture, transforming African masks and Dunhuang
frescoes into a marvelous blend of cartoon and traditional art. XU
ZHEN® thereby lays bare the cognitive transition generated by the
Internet, in which the efficiency of hyperlinks and ever-accelerating
channels of knowledge acquisition have led to complex and qualitative
changes.
The skepticism and ideological trends of post-modernity have long
been at the very root of XU ZHEN®’s creative practice. Cultural
appropriation and shifting iconographies are recurrent in his oeuvre.
With The Glorious, XU ZHEN® provides spectators with various
inroads into interpreting our present-day culture and social plight.
Amidst circumstances where chaos is rampant, the artist’s works have
a unique way of bringing to light the underlying swells of possibility.
Stele sculptures conjuring the Tower of Babel; paintings refracting a
bizarre, visionary aesthetic; the gloriously resplendent realm under
heaven: these inspirations not only reveal a lofty ambition of leading
art into the future, but also serve to condensate ancient oriental
wisdoms.