Bai Yiluo: System - Gold, acrylic and marker on canvas, 120 × 120 cm, 2012
The "system" has no specific direction. Everyone lives in different system, sensing the pressure all the time. However the system is complex and it’s hard to describe in detail. Just as, at night, countless information is covered and wrapped. What we can only do is to feel and taste.
Chen Xi: Planet of Water is Rising, pencil and ink on Fabriano paper, 100 x 70 cm, 2010
In my work I present seemingly irrational visions, which function as metaphors for the perplexing world we live in. These visions examine how remarkable it is to be human and to live as witnesses to life's futility and humor. As a society, we construct common narratives to make living in this world of absurdity palatable. My work may appear humorous at first, but at the core it is bleak. The humour and the surrealness conceal the tragic fact that life's truth and meaning is ultimately unattainable. There is both humor and anguish in the idea that life may be nothing but the existence of pain. Through my drawings, I explore the idea that as humans we must struggle to survive inexplicable and harrowing conditions beyond our control.
Monika Lin: Hybrid Landscapes, resin and acrylic paint, ink, plaster pill replicas on wood panel, 30 x 40 cm, 2012
As we continue to increase our reliance on fuels, energies and contemporary technologies, we leave an ever-larger imprint on our world. Such tragedies as the oil spills of Exxon Valdez and the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown as well as everyday, ongoing emissions have expelled pollutants into our environment that have resulted in permanent changes, challenging our understanding of “Nature” as a romantic notion of the divine landscape to that of a landscape irrevocably shaped by human activity and industry. Looking at these pollutants as well as biological, cellular growths and mutations in a micro-macro manner, I consider these cells and chemical spills as elements of our contemporary natural world.
Shi Jing: Shi Jing, Qi - Clear Dispersal, oil on canavs, 154 x 167 cm, 2011
The Qi 炁 series aims at the territory beyond abstraction an objective existence which is different from the spiritual and the material.
Wu Gaozhong: Wu Gaozhong, Roving H-9, paper, 82 x 102 cm, 2010
I often wander between my soul and flesh. I always hesitate between maintaining and abandoning and floating between last-nights dreams and tonight’s helplessness. Truth and falsehood, affection and hatred, all these feelings are jammed together, entwined and suspened in my sad little spiritual space. It is really boring. I want to be a wisp of wind clinging to the shore, yet still every day without fail I wander lifelessly.
Zhu Ye: Red, No. 1, oil on canavs, 130 x 130 cm, 2011
For me this work was a way to look for the harmony of life, to define an idea about balance. It's a way to embrace nature and the universe.
