
Geng Dayou’s artistic creations focus on the projection of individual states onto everyday objects. Drawing inspiration from the concept of “Gesamtkunstwerk”, the artist continues the core of Romanticism in his work. By intertwining personal experiences, affective connections to everyday objects, and spatial memories, he creates an enduring sense of “emptiness” and establishes a state of potentiality entangled within social contexts. The exhibition titled “When No One is Around, Dance Gracefully” emerges from the absence of a subject, reflecting the remnants of subjectivity and the loss of self. It serves as Geng Dayou’s observation and feedback on the diminishing subjectivity in the face of complex social conditions, as well as the deconstruction of the sublime within popular culture, aiming to reshape order and seek spiritual transcendence in modernity. It constructs a cyclical, endless, void, and aimless overall structure. Furthermore, as a shared experience pervasive among the masses, “When No One is Around, Dance Gracefully” becomes a collective opening ceremony, a united resistance against nihilism.








Founded in 1996, ShanghART Gallery is one of the first contemporary art galleries established in China. With spaces in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore, ShanghART has been a driving force of the development of Chinese contemporary art for the past twenty years. Working closely together with over 40 artists, ShanghART regularly participates in the major international art fairs and collaborates with important art institutions in China and from all over the world.

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