The Universe Floats Day and Night - Sun Ziyao Solo Exhibition

Float on, Float into — Sun Ziyao Solo Exhibition

Producer: Li Yifei

Producer: Li Yifei

Curator: Bao Dong

Curator: Bao Dong

Opening time:2024.09.07

Opening: 2024.09.07

Exhibition time:2024.09.08—10.06

Duration: 2024.09.08—10.06

Exhibition location: XIN ART SPACE (2nd floor, Zhongyi Building, 270 Beijing East Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai)

Address: 2F, Zhongyi Building, 270 East Beijing Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

XIN ART SPACE will present artist Sun Ziyao’s solo exhibition “The Universe Floats Day and Night” from September 8 to October 6, 2024.The exhibition is curated by Bao Dong and displays more than 30 works created by Sun Ziyao in recent years.

The universe floats day and night

Text / Bao Dong

Landscape, which should be the most natural thing, is often not so "natural" in art. In the history of Western art, when "landscape" gradually broke away from literary narrative and changed from the background of portraits and historical paintings to independent landscape paintings, it was also the moment when visuality broke away from language and romanticism defeated enlightenment. In the Enlightenment, when Pascal used reeds to metaphor the human body and Hobbes used "natural state" to describe the barbaric condition of pre-social humans, nature was still an object of oppression. It was not until romanticism, Wordsworth's "nature poetry" and Constable's landscape paintings that nature became an equal object and gradually became a perfect example and even a source of inspiration. Since then, landscape paintings, from Turner, Courbet, Monet, to Cézanne, have formed an evolutionary path of visual modernity. Painting has gained its pure self through "landscape".

Every painter has his own starting point for painting landscapes. For painters like Constable, painting nature is a simple romanticism, using nature to break through the old routines of classicism and resist the vulgarity of the emerging industrial culture. Cézanne painted Mount Sainte-Victoire because it was stable and unchanging, and it was right in front of him, so he could repeatedly adjust the solid order on the picture. Sun Ziyao painted landscapes to escape. In the early summer of 2020, he not only escaped from illness and depression, but also from his past life and painting style. He traveled all the way from Beijing to Tibet, wandering in the world day and night, immersed in the scenery during the journey and after arriving. Therefore, for Sun Ziyao, natural scenery is not only a psychological healing, but also a spiritual enlightenment, and an adjustment to the established artistic concepts and styles.

Previously, his works were in an existentialist style, using sharp charcoal pencils and dry brushes to depict symbolic human bodies, animals and objects. While pursuing the depth of the subject, he also somewhat isolated himself from the world in front of him. But this "escape" seems to have brought him back to the tranquility and enjoyment of life, and stained him with a touch of natural spirit. Therefore, for Sun Ziyao, nature is not only the beauty in front of him, but also the Eden of retreat. Facing the scenery, he suddenly realized something.

Unlike the ethnic customs paintings of the 1980s and 1990s, Sun Ziyao does not highlight the "wonders" of ethnic culture or show his "gaze" on others. He views these landscapes in a daily mentality. It can even be said that everything is what he sees, and there is no need to distinguish whether it is a scene or not. The reflections in the water in the forest, the moon halo behind the idle clouds at night, the reflections on the car window glass, and the rainbow after the rain in the mountains, these scenes that are intentionally included in the paintings are not only what he actually sees, but also the reference objects for realizing his painting language. Of course, he did not deliberately avoid those themes with regional characteristics, such as yaks, eagles, felt hats, and prayer flags, but these are the daily lives in Tibet. They have the same meaning as the cats on the railings, the dogs on the grass, the empty roads, and the clear French windows in our lives today, naturally. In fact, Sun Ziyao is not just a spectator, he wants to enter that kind of natural life. Labor is always the life connection between humans and nature. At this time, nature is no longer an object, but the whole of you who are in and live in it.

At this level, these paintings constitute a new "life stream", a "life stream" created by repeatedly soaking and washing with water-based pigments on paper. Here, life is not only a series of scenes or images, but also the "up and down" of emotions on paper. We seem to be able to see the state of the painter on paper. In terms of this intuitive presentation, Sun Ziyao's paintings are very different from traditional ink paintings. Although he also uses the materials and techniques of ink paintings, he uses more of a sketch-like style to shape and structure, and does not care about the "brush" and "ink" in the general sense.

In many works, the main objects appear in the form of silhouettes, such as trees, dogs, eagles, and people. Sun Ziyao does not care much about the shaping of volume, but often uses the purity of color and the contrast of sceneries to form a sense of space. This is not only due to the characteristics of the painting medium, but also a kind of language selection and restraint. From a distance, these works have a kind of watermark print temperament, but when you look closely, they are full of moist breath, as if he is painting those unknown places in the clouds. But there is no emptiness and silence there, but a boiling heart and a magnificent life. Day and night alternate, the sun and the moon rise and fall, and the world follows one after another.

About the Artist

Sun ZiyaoBorn in Dalian, Liaoning in 1987. Graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2014 with a master's degree in Chinese painting materials and preservation and restoration from Hu Wei's studio. Currently lives in Beijing.

Sun Ziyao's creative practice is to use comprehensive media to paint the scenery he encounters while walking, so as to deeply explore himself and the relationship between people and the outside world.

Some of Sun Ziyao's recent solo exhibitions: "My Walden" (Guardian Art Center, Beijing, 2024), "No End" (Author's Gallery, Beijing, 2023), "I Hope I Am Me" (Author's Gallery, Beijing, 2020), "My Dear Friends" (Suzaku Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2019), "Against the Forest" (Morning Gallery, Beijing, 2018), "Beginning of Ink" (Suzaku Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2016);Selected group exhibitions: "In the Prime of Life" (Rong Bao Zhai, Beijing, 2024), "Brave New World" (GUARDIAN ART, Beijing, 2024), "PDF_2024" (HANMO S Art Space, Beijing, 2024), "Look at Me" (Guardian Art Center, Jiantuo Trust Art Award, Beijing, 2023), "INK+ Ink" (Australia Suzaku Gallery, Sydney, 2022), "Freehand China-Invitational Exhibition of Young Artists from the National Academy of Painting" (China National Academy of Painting Art Museum, Beijing, 2018), "Going to the Monument Camp-Density Symbol Array" (Ying Space, Beijing, 2018), "Stranger" (Era Art Museum, Wenzhou, 2018), "Standing Out-Traveling in the Age of Anxiety" (White Box Art Museum, Beijing, 2017), "Wall Poster 'Wall Power' Young Artists Group Exhibition" (Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2017).

About the Curator

Bao Dong, born in Anhui in 1979. Graduated from the Art History Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2006. He is a new generation of active art critics and curators in China, co-founder and artistic director of the "Beijing Contemporary" Art Fair. Currently works and lives in Beijing.

XIN ART SPACE

XIN ART SPACE (formerly Huayi Gallery) was founded in 1998 and is one of the most influential and earliest galleries in southern China. It moved to Beijing in 2005 and established the New Beijing Gallery. XIN ART SPACE inherits the history and accumulation of gallery operation for more than 20 years and is committed to becoming an art institution with an international vision, discovering modern and contemporary art works with independent, profound and mature connotations, and cultivating young and middle-aged artists with potential.

In the past 20 years, the museum has participated in the planning of more than 100 exhibitions, covering traditional calligraphy and painting, modern and contemporary classics, and contemporary art. Important projects include "100 Years of Wang Zhaomin", "Jin Shangyi·Oil Painting and Sketch Exhibition", "Pure Realm-Shen Qin Ink Art Exhibition", "Solidified Passion·Li Zongjin Art Retrospective Exhibition", "Starting from the Modern Times·15 Expressions of 15 Artists" and other exhibitions.

Address: 2F, Zhongyi Building, No. 270 Beijing East Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday during the exhibition period 11:00-18:00

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