Galleria dell'Arco - Aike Gallery is pleased to announce the new solo show of Chai Yiming, Twenty-one. A series of new inks on rice paper will be on display in the Shanghai space located in 50 Moganshan Road.
 
This set of new inks takes a subtle step forward from the previous body of works by Chai Yiming, where fantastic and bizarre creatures populating a void and ambiguous ground, give life to a costant struggle between certainty of nature and its relentless expansion and reduction.
 
Altough forms are rendered with bright tones and ample gestures, this new series of lethargic landscapes disclose a land of phantoms and shadows. Such as a stake of translucent photos of the same object overlapping each other with a slight displacement, the contour of every form, be it a building, a tree or a stone is uncertain and elusive whilst its mass remains solid.

Like at Twenty-one at night, when the daylight has just given its way, shapes acquire a temporary glare of clarity, before being swallowed by the darkness.
 
Moreover, "Twenty-one" is the name of a gambling game, which, in this case, refers to a peculiar aspect
of the artist's creative attitude: adopting a certain kind of permissive disposition, the shapes, forms and lines originated from the tip of the brush engage the viewer in a sort of hide-and-seek, partly evading and partly pursuing the object the artist wants to represent, resembling the logics of a gambling game.