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Hu Qingtai

HU QINGTAI

Discarding the House Magician Space 21 August–26 September 2026 Beijing
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Press Release

Hu Qingtai bought his apartment in Xianghe. According to him, he was looking for a home for his family at the time, and first noticed the housing development through an advertisement after accidentally taking the wrong exit while driving back to Beijing.

The year was 2016. Housing prices around Beijing had already gone up, while Xianghe, located a little farther from the city, still seemed to offer room for growth. Everything still seemed to point toward a promising future, yet Hu Qingtai could not have known that this sense of possibility was already nearing its end, nor that the changes he would later witness there would gradually enter his practice.

In the years that followed, the economic boom across the country began to lose momentum, and the area he would come to regard as a second home entered a period of decline. When Hu Qingtai revisited his notes years later, he found that the hopes once attached to the apartment had become a burden in the present.

He thus decided to discard the house—an act of direct confrontation with reality.

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Installation Views

Exhibition view: Hu Qingtai, Discarding the House, Magician Space, Beijing (21 August–26 September 2026). Courtesy Magician Space.
Exhibition view: Hu Qingtai, Discarding the House, Magician Space, Beijing (21 August–26 September 2026). Courtesy Magician Space.
Exhibition view: Hu Qingtai, Discarding the House, Magician Space, Beijing (21 August–26 September 2026). Courtesy Magician Space.
Exhibition view: Hu Qingtai, Discarding the House, Magician Space, Beijing (21 August–26 September 2026). Courtesy Magician Space.
Exhibition view: Hu Qingtai, Discarding the House, Magician Space, Beijing (21 August–26 September 2026). Courtesy Magician Space.
About the Artist

Hu Qingtai, born in 1985, Heilongjiang Province. He received his BA degree from the New Media Department at China Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. Hu’s artwork primarily explores human relationships with objects, as well as relationships between human beings, focusing on the individual’s will and mental activity. He interrogates established notions of art and artist identity through appropriating common social transactions. His works span a range of mediums, including performance, video, sculpture and painting.

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About the Gallery

The Chinese transliteration for magician – ‘mó jīn shí’ has the meaning of sharpening and refining, suggests a kind of reflection and introspection, while the English word ‘magician’ itself means something fantastical and unpredictable, implying further possibilities.

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Address
798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road
Chaoyang District
Beijing
China
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Saturday
10.30am - 6.30pm
(1)
Beijing Magician Space, 798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road
Magician Space contemporary art gallery in Beijing China
Magician Space
798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
+86 10 5978 9635
http://www.magician-space.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday
10.30am - 6.30pm
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