Is this a significant era? If it is, we seem doomed to have no relationship with significance. Life is constantly fragmented, twisted and squeezed by hormones, social value and identity politics. We learn delusion from reality and simulate reality within delusion. We become increasingly mature and sophisticated. We keep progressing and eventually draw ourselves further apart from our original dream. We cannot be significant. But can we then be insignificant? 

Young artists Li Chao, Hu Zi and Zhai Liang chose painting as a way of living, of self-construction dichotomizing the “ego” and “object”, and of self-improvement and spiritual self-exile when confronting the “real” world. 

Looking at Li Chao’s work is like opening up a gate to enter his private dreamland. Greyish dark shades, virtual scenes, absurd scenarios and non-narrative fragments transmit the impression that this is far more than just a simple overlapping of the real world and a mirrored image. It seems he’s managed to build a private space behind the reality. Hu Zi’s work features distinct personal traces: a subconscious revelation of feminism and an obsession with the prime of youth and hallucinations caused by hormones. Enlarged portraits and amputated body parts make viewers feel as if they are examining close-ups, reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s early works, which intentionally guided the viewer’s eyesight to fall upon her preset focal points. Compared to Zhai Liang’s oil painting, his small-sized paintings on paper convey a more intimate feeling, as if the artist was talking to himself through those works. They become an integral part of his life, as ordinary and indispensable as breathing and eating. Letters to An Unknown Friend are created specially for this exhibition by Zhai Liang. Based in New York, the artist chose to communicate with a friend whom he never met and was probably made up through traditional ways such as correspondence and painting. According to the artist: “The sense of being “unknown” may lead to affection or disgust. Either way it’s intriguing.”

Personal as they are, works by these artists of same generation, Li Chao, Hu Zi and Zhai Liang, also show something in common in terms of inner appeal. Their work has nothing to do with significance, social background, political struggles and globalized aesthetics. Instead, they are fully invested in subtle emotions and feelings, as well as the anxiety and self-improvement experienced by our mind and body.

*image (left)
© Hu Zi
courtesy of the artist and Phoenix Art Palace