Hidden Life: Apartment Diary: Curated by Feng Boyi
“My Territory, I Rule!”－Exhibition: “Hidden Life: Apartment Diary”
Fenboyi
In a modern society, the apartment is probably the best space to represent personal life style, state of being, and taste. To survive, we need the very basic refuge; however, it is no longer a simple space for living. The functional demand has been gradually replaced by a modernized life style. In other words, we no longer ask the living space to be the one that merely shields us from wind and rain. More attention is paid to our surroundings, the parts and spaces that we directly interact with. In the “hidden life” that connotes a private and free living space, or namely in the state of hidden life, it may best reflect and experience the personal pursuit and feeling for living quality. Moreover, the state of being also determines the value orientation of the artist’s creation.
For the China artists who were born in the 50s and 60s in the 20thcentury, they grew up in a comparatively single, stable society and economy, experiencing their life in the turbulent age full of political movements. Quite the opposite, the young artists we present in this exhibition grew up in a stable, political environment but experience their life in an unstable economy and society. Nowadays, the coming of information age and the support of computer technology have made it possible to live in diversified. The infinite circulation of information makes obvious changes to values; the dissemination of internet brings us to see a lot of social spectacles; the new virtual space broke the traditional boundary between people. With courage and wit, character can be displayed freely, which becomes typical of culture nowadays and make the young artists peculiar. Their values lie in honestly knowing their own desires, likes and dislikes regardless of collective interests; neither seeks for secular wealth nor fame.The extreme personalized choice of life style, obsession for sensual excitement has been pursued courageously and enthusiastically, which probably makes their sense of culture, value, and moral distinctive from normal people.
Therefore, with the theme of “Hidden Life: Apartment Diary,” the exhibition shows artists’ works that are not emphasized as “artworks”. Thus the artists’ behaviors in the hidden state of daily reality are presented; their state in the hidden life being refracted and indicated. The “hidden life” is also suggestive of “trying life,” which means a way of life and creation that reconciles with the environment and lives casually－“My Territory, I Rule!” Staying in one’s own apartment keeps the overly violent whirlpool and harm of the outer world afar, a way of saving one’s own energy from being consumed by any practical matters and pressure. The making of these dairy-like, documentary works is closely associated with their actual living space, life style and taste. Namely, it is a direct demonstration of their absolutely free state of being and standpoint of creation.
Compared with this exhibition, the status quo of art creation nowadays still has definite reference, in which the phenomenon of cultural signs indicative of traditional culture or red classic culture abounds and symbolic and metaphoric references are too direct and definite. Numerous exhibitions under the commercial mechanism overflow with large amounts of similar works that have direct reference to the work. The excessive use of images, symbols and signifiers in the works is an unwise choice that caters to the majority, contributing to the bareness of artistic creativity and imagination and resulting in our aphasia and absence while facing the future world. From this, we reflect upon the attitude and thoughts for life of their generation and try to find out the hidden relationship between them and their works. Viewers may see the status quo of contemporary art and hope to know how it happens. For this reason hidden beneath the status quo, it makes the primitive state of being a self-conscious expression of the real self.
The above ideas explain the concept, purpose and method of this exhibition.
