ZHOU ZIXI

ShanghART Singapore is pleased to invite you to One Afternoon…ZHOU Zixi solo exhibition from 24 May to 7 July 2014.

‘After a long time has passed, when we look back down the road we’ve travelled, our suffering, no matter how great, becomes blurry and distant. Like ink spilled over a book, a sudden disaster gradually transforms into a permeating sadness.’–Zhou Zixi quotes a friend who has passed away.

‘One Afternoon…’ explores the artist’s personal traces, memories, introspections, observations and the complex collage of emotional fragments. As an artist who has yet to be rid of ‘1989 complex’, ZHOU Zixi’s works interweaves his poetic reminiscence towards the June 1989 protests in China; his upset towards the numb public, reflections of much agony and isolation growing up after the social trauma.

Zhou Zixi’s work presents one’s life reflection and metaphor to the state of living condition of his generation. In his canvas, social trauma under the context of unabashed pursuit of material gain, in reality, become a social metaphor, the passion and common memory of the generation passing through 1980s converted into the an invisible scar, the pain could be triggered even by the slightest touch. This solo exhibition forms a dialogue with Van Der Kolk’s statement: Experiencing trauma is an essential part of being human; history is written in blood. Individual experience, past history and on-going history meet and pile one above the other. Some elements repeat in pictures again and again, take concerted action to form intertextuality. The exhibition presents a deliberately static surrounding, provoking emotions felt in subtle landscape and still life yet implying the origin of sentiment in those unexpected and bizarre scenes.

In Jeffrey C. Alexander’s classic publication Trauma: A Social Theory, he argues that traumas are not merely psychological but collective experiences. It is apparent in Zhou Zixi’s painting that the relationship between the individual and society is constantly probed, permeating the Chinese reality, politics and history of China, ZHOU Zixi’s works feature the complexity of an individual, living life with much emotion, caught between the evolvement of a developing country. Exploring the macro and micro narratives in degree of breadth and depth, he endowed the paintings with profound and enduring power which endeavors to summon up hidden and ignored historical relations beyond isolated time.

As Milan Kundera said, ‘The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting’, this afternoon, let the mind wander…

ZHOU Zixi was born in Jiangxi province in 1970. He currently lives and works in Shanghai. Recent solo exhibitions include Late Spring and Early Summer, ShanghART Beijing (2011); China 1946-1949, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2008); Interiors, BüroFriedrich, Berlin, Germany (2006); Happy Life, ZHOU Zixi Solo exhibition, Bizart, Shanghai (2005). Recent exhibition include First Kyiv International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine (2012); China Power Station - part 4, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); China Power Station: Part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007); Under the Blue Sky, Grace Li Gallery, Zürich (2006) and Under the Skin, Universal Studios, Beijing (2006). His works were collected by White Rabbit (New South Wales, Australia) and Astrup Fearnley Museum (Oslo, Norway).