Shanghai Gallery of Art is pleased to present REINCARNATION, Cui Xiuwen’s debut solo in the gallery. The prominent artist connects the physical space into a “prosperity” loop, placing a metaphysical journey from the origin of lives to their perpetual return. The exhibition introduces a circuitous convergence between abstraction and representation, porous sensations and spiritual outcomes.
It started as a line, a trace, an imprint and a flare. It lit up to a breath and turned into a pulse. You stand there trying to recognize, a him, a her, an other, a moment of intimacy and a cave towards infinity. Back then you were not yet you and I was not yet me; back then it was already there waiting.
REINCARNATION unveils Cui Xiuwen’s elaborate thoughts, digging further into the enlightening transition of her 2013 series IU. She lays figurative elements, bulky chops and meticulous lines into structuralist sceneries where the formation becomes the distinction of its provenance. The movements of the linear traces are illustrated on two-dimensional surfaces, lined-up as arrays and transformed into video installations. As an established multimedia artist in contemporary China, Cui carefullyconstructs and fearlessly deconstructs notions and ways of presentation.
Following the entrance, you step into a “forest”. This is an objective sphere where collective memories contain. The artist facilitates the structure of the exhibition space as a factor of her energy being filled; even the columns and walls are taken into consideration. Woodblock and thread implicitly contextualize the artist’s research in varied aesthetical possibilities as well as perceptional coincidences. They became symbols of lives. Within an elusive map, they twist and they spread. “I never see through the scene of this world,” Cui Xiuwen expresses. Perhaps it is not meant to be seen through from the beginning; instead you breathe to take them all in.
Red is the colour evoked as a connection between the beings and the outside world. Red is the color of warmth, of a body temporary and a sign for our cognitive selves. It indicates I and you, our facial features, ethnics and identities. Our bodies came out of the red and leave the red behind. It also marks the artist’s progressive development throughout over 20 years of her career, from depiction of daily encounters to representation of female identity, from criticism she advocates to an ultimate breakthrough, a reincarnation that brings her spirit back to the primitive stage, to communicate with matters beyond the material world.
