Ao Jing (b.1993) currently works and lives in Beijing. She graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London and the Royal College of Art's Contemporary Art Practice (Pathway: Public Sphere). Ao's artworks explore how different materials transformed into varied series of sculptures, performances and visuals under artistic expressions in different environments. In turn, the ambiguous relationship between 'material' and 'immaterial', 'conscious' and 'unconscious', is explored in a non-dualistic context.
Compared to the current mode of artistic production, which is dominated by dialectical thinking, Ao's work is more narrative literature, constantly asks questions and wanders through doubts. In the process, all her attitudes, choices, confusions, etc. about life are honestly presented in her works.
Although Ao Jing's recent works are comprised of many materials, the focus is not on the finished form. Rather, the focus is on the way they were organised.
The process is similar to the growth of a plant becomes clear when looking closely at the works in the exhibition. Branch-like threads sprout from lumps, stretching outward until they meet up with other materials to forge a new part. They seem unpredictable—unlike a predetermined layout of some blueprints—but start from a nucleus and grow progressively and gently.
Ao Jing consciously undermines the purpose of creation throughout the process. Time and contingency are at the core of it all. Under her intervention, objects become another kind of nature after mixes with humans, but not new evidence or new forms in the existing Anthropocene. Instead, it is a field to rethink the relationship between human and nature by bringing human back into the realm of nature. Here, nature is the potential of things to arise in different situations. It is another possibility of randomness that exists beyond simple consciousness and objective.
Therefore, 'In the Pit' is a metaphor for this kind of spontaneous growth:
When one feels alive in the exhibition hall, it is because each work is an assimilated evolving event. When they repeatedly transcend the framework of teleology, a kind of natural vitality emerges.
Press release courtesy Magician Space.
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