XIAO ZHANG

2022.11.22 - 2023.01.14

Artist: Liu Ting

Curator: Zhou Qinru 

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Artworks in this exhibition span the artist's three-year creation period from 2019 to 2022, with over ten works on paper and installations on display. As the artist ponders her own issues and challenges, she is equally concerned with the current state of society, certain topical events or certain moral debates, and is not shy about making her voice heard on public platforms. Such actions, however, eventually turn into a vague and hidden, but firm force, which is the opposite of the artist's delicate and gentle graphic images, where the conflict starts from within her and ends in her paintings, which can be considered as a successful achievement.

 

'XIAO ZHANG' is both a personification of the 'self-experience' of the artist Liu Ting, whose mind and soul converge under her brush, and is also intended to be a 'spiritual portrait' of those who try to resist the surging tide of people and mixed thoughts in the context of modern society. We cannot simply categorize 'XIAO ZHANG' as a symbol of some 'individual destiny'; strictly speaking, 'XIAO ZHANG' is a portrait of an 'individual destiny' finding its own way out of a 'group destiny'. Albert Camus said, ‘Fate is not in man but around him’. So, when the viewer tries to see the true face of the beautiful girls in her paintings who are idealized by the artist, they will suddenly find themselves unable to detach 'their' faces from the fragmented modern society. In Liu Ting’s language, 'XIAO ZHANG', or Xiao Liu, Xiao Li, or Xiao Wang, Xiao Zhou, their 'individual destiny' has long been deeply intertwined, taking root in this era along with flowers, whisky, cats, trains that no longer roar, bones and nails, and long national borders. 'XIAO ZHANG' is neither ambitious nor sharp, she is tired of fame and fortune; it is precisely because of it, various situations and absurdities of life passively lead people to themselves.