Artists: Chen Yujun / Chen Yufan, Gu Jing, Guo Ling, Jin Shi, Liang Bing, Luo Haiming, Ma Xiaoxiao, Qiu Shiming, Tao Damin, Wu Guangyu, Zheng Qiang

Curators: Chen Haitao, Deng Dafei

Platform China is pleased to present its first exhibition in 2009 on March 14th-Look Deeper，an group exhibition with 12 young artists. These artists are some young people that  attempt to explore deeply their artistic creation and self-seeking of their hearts obscurely, in good times or bad.  

As the world-wide economic crisis closely around us and affect our ways of life in stages, we can all experience that  in the great context of globalization, those problems which seem local or partial, in fact, do not exist in isolation. Facing with the creation of various new ideas, people naturaly benefited from multiple value standards and the feeling of identity. Kinds of thought’s own logics contain corresponding values, easily making people into a virtual sense of security.

These participating young artists avoided the public-oriented and cynical attitude. In general, they do not agree with the superficial cultural patterns that emphasize pleasure, which are popularly used among the currently art world in China. From the methodology level, they emphasized more on the the complex experience of survival; From the content, most of them insisted on a “deeper” exploration and effort of their own artistic creation. This appeared on the selective use of variety historical resources or the reseach on the relationship of individual and its life… From the appearance of the works, they used plain and unvarnished languange instead of eccentric tactics and mathods to question their position and the relationship with the backgroud which they are within. At the face of pluralistic values, they considered the depth as their proving mode.

When the newfangled ways which seem shocking at first but finally tire the audience, we will of cause calm down to think about what other possibilities are. Should we really make a visual spectacle to meet the more and more critical standards? Or should we go back to the original point to re-consider the relationship between art and life itself.

The title of this exhibition points the academic direction and temperament that the curators hope to achieve. We’d like to stimulate more thoughts of the contemporary art in China from others.