Hong Kong – Pace is pleased to present Yin Xiuzhen, Everywhere, a solo exhibition dedicated to Yin Xiuzhen, a key figure in Chinese installation and performance art since the 1990s, at its Hong Kong Gallery. On view from November 25 to January 5, 2023, this exhibition marks Yin's first presentation in Hong Kong since her acclaimed institutional exhibition Yin Xiuzhen, Sky Patch opened at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) in 2020. Yin's show with Pace in Hong Kong, which follows her 2021 solo exhibition at Pace's New York gallery, will spotlight her ongoing explorations of materiality. Among the 40 sculptures and installations on view, which date from 2008 to 2022, will be Yin's new series The Surging Waves Chronicles, which has never before been exhibited publicly.
Yin is known for her deeply resonant installations incorporating everyday objects and materials, from used clothes and fabrics to porcelain and cement to fruits and plants. These layered, lyrical works—which serve as repositories of cultural memory—capture the undercurrents of disorientation and unease in modern society. Yin's upcoming exhibition with Pace will bring together several bodies of work, most of which are being shown in Hong Kong for the first time, that reflect her longstanding interest in the variable qualities of her chosen materials.
Transmutations of seemingly static materials into lively, vital entities are central to Yin's practice. In recent years, she has adopted porcelain as the core material for her work—compared to other materials that evolve slowly over time, porcelain undergoes extraordinary and rapid changes during its firing. At high temperatures, the originally soft, unremarkable clay becomes crystalline, cooling and solidifying as a glossy, talismanic object. The physical and symbolic energy transformations that take place as part of this process are especially fascinating to the artist.
With Yin's latest series, titled 'The Surging Waves Chronicles' and featured in her exhibition with Pace in Hong Kong, the artist embraces greater physicality in her work with porcelain clay, pushing and squeezing the raw material to create flesh-like folds on the surfaces of thick ceramic panels. The title of the work suggests its relationship to the Chinese tradition of ancient literati who make use of scenery to express emotions, and, on a visual level, the rolls and layers of porcelain clay ebb like waves which recalling the literary image of Virginia Woolf's writings that symbolises the tide of life. The artist's iconic fragments of worn clothes emerge from the gaps between the waves. These fabrics are changing slowly over a longer span of time, faithfully recording the life experiences of their owners in the fibres.
The Hong Kong exhibition will also include works from Yin's recent Ripple series, which was first presented at the 2020 Jinan Biennale. The Ripple installations incorporate organic materials—various fruits and plants—as part of Yin's investigations of change and ephemerality. Since the 1990s, she has often used materials such as fruit and food in her installations, allowing the works to change through time. With these works, the artist documents fleeting encounters among materials as well as the exchanges between people and the artwork. Through a kind of temporary dependence, the artist hopes to establish a continuous relationship between the art work and people.
Social and economic conditions have been focuses of Yin's practice throughout her career. In recent years, she has used art's spiritual powers to consider these issues against the transient, impermanent nature of human life. Her latest solo exhibition with Pace meditates on enactments of resiliency in her materials and her relationships to the crises of the current moment. In 2012, Yin Xiuzhen titled her solo exhibition Nowhere to Land, pointing to the state of existence and her art practice at that time, and making a footnote for that era of rapid development but anxiety and confusion. Ten years later, the latest solo exhibition Everywhere attempts to present a more resilient form of life, just as the ever-changing and generating energies contained in the materials she chooses, in a way to counteract the more invisible but widespread violence and dilemmas facing humanity today.
Yin Xiuzhen (b. 1963, Beijing, China), a leading figure in Chinese contemporary art, explores themes of the past and present, memory, globalisation, and homogenisation. Yin began her career after earning a BA from Capital Normal University's Fine Arts Department, Beijing, in 1989. She is best known for her sculptures and installations comprised of secondhand objects like clothing, shoes, and suitcases. Inspired by the rapidly changing cultural environment of her native Beijing, Yin arranges and reconfigures these recycled items to draw out their individual and collective histories. Her assembled materials operate as sculptural documents of memory, alluding to the lives of individuals who are often neglected in the drive toward industrial development, excessive urbanisation, and the growing global economy.Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of President and CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program—comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.The gallery has also spearheaded explorations into the intersection of art and technology through its new business models, exhibition interpretation tools, and representation of artists cultivating advanced studio practices. As part of its commitment to technologically engaged artists within and beyond its program, Pace launched a hub for its web3 activity, Pace Verso, in November 2021.
Today, Pace has nine locations worldwide, including a European foothold in London and Geneva, and two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace's long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which operated from 2016 to 2022. Pace's engagement with Silicon Valley's technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, as well as an office and viewing room in Beijing. Pace's satellite exhibition spaces in East Hampton and Palm Beach present continued programming on a seasonal basis.
Press release courtesy Pace Gallery.
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