Artist Wang Lijun's personal project "Cutting ____ Quiet" opened on November 30, 2023. This is Wang Lijun's second solo exhibition at Beijing Commune.

The structure of the title of this exhibition implies the intertwined relationship between the solid and the void, the visible and the hidden, the instantaneous and the diachronic. This is exactly what the artist intends to present in his works to reshape the sculptural experience. Through these works, the exhibition attempts to reflect on our interaction with the objects and environment around us, or in the words of the artist:"We always want to create some kind of solid sense of existence, but we are particularly easy to ignore the existence of other things."
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An industrial smell permeates the exhibition space, and the desolate atmosphere of the exhibition hall building seems to intensify this smell.At one end of the exhibition hall, an indescribable black image like a shadow props up the white wall until it approaches the ceiling.
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Different from the shadows in nature, the uneven edges of this image add dynamics to it, almost like a climbing creature.This effect is produced by carving rubber, and the almost wild texture on the surface of the image is the trace of the artist's carving with one knife.However, unlike the creatures that cling to the wall, rubber always tries to separate from the wall due to its own weight.

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The materials in Wang Lijun's past works often have the quality of "heavy";The intuitive impulse to sculpt rubber stems from the medium’s unique “soft heaviness.”

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For artists, rubber weighs differently than metal. In contrast to metal, which is sharp, direct, and "focused," rubber is visually and feel inert. Countless chisels made no sound.The audience is faced with a precarious rubber on the verge of collapse, which seems somewhere between a gentle personality and an intimidating appearance.In the artist's hands, the ethereal phantom acquires weight and intensity.

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Contrary to the optimism that weight brings to rubber is the “brittleness” of chalk on the other side of the exhibition.In Wang Lijun's creations, chalk, both as a medium and as a representation of itself, is often treated with the unique care of the artist's personal memory and often seems to be the epitome of fragility and ephemerality.

However, in this exhibitionRows of tiny chalks create a sense of eternity similar to that found in classical and religious sculptures, suspended on the steel structure without being affected by wind, frost, rain and dew.

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Through the cutting technique, the rocky and porous structure of the chalk-chalk sediments are fully exposed., and the powdery nature of the chalk also dulls the sharp edges produced between sharpening at different angles. One after another, the weathered appearance shows a long time of carving - in the words of the artist: labor.

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However, in front of the audience,These tiny miniatures are vulnerable to attack, the end of the exhibition will also mark their passing.

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In his artistic experiments,Wang Lijun always seems to be able to find a matching brushwork that is indistinguishable from different materials.. However, this seeming naturalness is precisely the artist’s attempt to expose the absurdity of the concept of balance under the guise of nature.

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When the scale tilted violently, as the audience did this timeThe exhibition is torn between "heavy" and "light", reality and emptiness., in which the pursuit of so-called balance almost means surrendering to external time. In the seemingly mechanical and tasteless labor process,The artist paranoidly fights against forgetting and constantly hints at the time inherent in the subject., re-examine the relationship with the outside world.

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Wang Lijun was born in Liling, Hunan in 1982. He graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. He received a master's degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and a doctorate from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2022. He currently works and lives in Beijing. Wang Lijun's artistic practice uses sculpture and installation as the main creative media. Starting from his daily experience, he explores the physical space of materials and the material space of self-survival. His works discuss the contradiction between the permanence of objects and the transience of perception, exploring the way objects exist in space and perception. The artist attempts to re-perceive and gain insight into the relationship between the individual and the surroundings in the spatial folds of individual existence.

Wang Lijun's works have been exhibited at the Guangzhou Triennial (2023), Shenzhen-Hong Kong Urban/Architecture Biennale (2023), Datong International Sculpture Biennale (2018), etc. His solo exhibitions have been held in Guangdong Museum of Art, Graduate School of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Beijing Commune, Beijing Soka Art Center, etc. His works have been exhibited in Guangdong Art Museum, Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Shenzhen OCAT·Hua Art Museum, Guangzhou Fei Art Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Beijing Today Art Museum, Beijing Times Art Museum, Portugal Exhibited in many places such as the Oriental Museum and the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.

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