As a traditional calendar system, the almanac is widely circulated. Although some of its functions have now been transferred to mobile devices, the printed paper almanac still occupies a place in family life within the scope of Eastern culture. Faced with this macro calendar system that relies on text, it is a challenge for contemporary art to intervene. Artist Xu Wentao's personal art project "Selecting a Date", curated by the famous curator Zhu He, explores this issue in a unique way.

In "Selecting a Date", he re-selected the auspicious and inauspicious contents in the lunar calendar with the same name, including random selection of words, deletion of single words and rearrangement of combinations. He printed the selected words into blocks, arranged, pasted, covered and polished them to reveal the plaster core. The blank space inside the work comes from the exposed color of the plaster body, and red paper and newspaper are added to increase the sense of form. The gray wooden inner frame is used for mounting to create a floating effect.

The work originated from Xu Wentao's mother repeatedly asking about the date of a family member's death, which triggered his individual thinking about the lunar calendar and choosing auspicious dates. Xu Wentao understands the discipline brought by the lunar calendar and believes that reflection is more important than opposition and that individual thinking should be retained.

The works in the "Selecting a Day" series are both textual and graphic. The pictographic characteristics of Chinese characters allow them to take into account both images and content, but in the works, the text loses its original meaning, and the graphic and aesthetic characteristics take the core. Xu Wentao also deliberately removes the characters in the vocabulary to create a strong visual effect, eliminate the readability and narrative of the content, and make the text "free and unrestrained".

In addition to appearing in the form of matrix collages, the works also appear in single-piece form, suggesting that each work, whether put together or alone, is a complete semantic unit.

Other works presented in this project, such as "God is Here" and "Auspiciousness", reduce the textual content and increase the time dimension.

It is worth mentioning that the century-old Hakka house in Tai Hang, Hong Kong, is in line with the time clues, allowing "selecting a date" to be considered from an individual dimension and inviting many elements to be associated with it.

"Selecting a Day" is Xu Wentao's personal project presented by otherthings and JMRG.

Project opening time: February 15 to March 14, 2025
Address: 31 Tai Hang San Tsuen Street, Hong Kong

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