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Dates: 2019.5.11 - 6.16

Opening: 15:00 - 18:00 · 2019.5.11

Chen Duxi’s solo exhibition “Wild State” opened on the 11th of May, 2019. Comprising nine pieces of newly created works of mineral pigment on silk, the show is scheduled to end on the 16th of June. This is the second solo exhibition of the Beijing-based artist since “Two Sides of a Coin” at the gallery in 2016.

In recent years, mountaineering has become the norm of Duxi’s life. Gradually a body belonging to nature was returned to him by walking in the mountains. Where does this stretch of ancient kinetic energy come from? What does his ancient body really need? Duxi began to think about these questions. When he leans over a gap in the steep wall, the grains of rock are clearly reflected on the skin of his knees. When he steps on the dry leaves, two seasons dust flavor will rise. As he faces the cliff, as he touches the moss, as he moves up and down on the stones of the river, as his whole body is embedded in the deep green pool, Duxi slowly has the answer.

It is this tangible perception that Duxi can trust. Just like only the moon can help him find his place in this space-time on a clear night. Duxi increasingly doubts the reliability of rational and logical thinking. So cognition needs to be remolded. Duxi means he needs to remold his sense of what is adequate based on the needs of the body. This criterion should be established in the natural order rather than in cultural experience. Perhaps there is a broader rule behind this.

We have much dimensional knowledge of the earth. Before man, the earth had a long and stormy history - the history of geology. From the beginning of the Hadean Eon, to the Archean, Proterozoic, Phanerozoic, then to the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and then to the following periods, from period to epoch, from epoch to age, from age to chron. During this long geological evolution, asteroid impacts over hundreds of millions of years created vast lava oceans. After tens of millions of years of bombardment, the hydrated meteorites cooled and formed oceans. Islands were formed by volcanic eruptions in the ocean. Continents were linked by islands. Continents were crushed into mountains and broken into gullies. Life goes extinct and regenerates, over and over again. So many years have been crushed beneath the ground. In such a large time scale, the overlap of civilization and geological formation is ephemeral, and thus produces a great tension, which makes us think about the way forward and the destination. Sometimes, we need to crawl our bodies on the ground to hear its breath. Although our bodies derived from this, we know very little about it. To depict nature with the body of nature, painting becomes nature itself. Let people’s natural nature and the natural nature of things to maintain a kind of communication and clarity, individual heterogeneity will manifest. This is the direction Duxi has been training and striving for. There is no way back but to let the water in the pen fade away with time.

Chen Duxi was born in Chengdu, China in 1983. Currently he lives and works in Beijing.