55

“Follow the Object”

Xiong Yanjun

Opening: 15:00 - 18:00 · 2021.3.20

Dates: 2021.3.20 - 4.25

Wuhu-based artist Xiong Yanjun’s individual exhibition “Follow the Object” opened on the 20th of March, 2021. Comprising newly completed two and three dimensional creations of various media, the show is scheduled to end on the 9th of March. This is the 1st solo presentation by the artist at Gallery 55.

"Follow the Object" is a term used in the world of traditional crafts and cultural relics. On the one hand, this concept corresponds to the method of creation, playing with the shape, texture and color of natural materials. On the other hand, it also shows a kind of value orientation, a traditional aesthetic concept which is extended and expanded in the contemporary context.

Xiong Yanjun’s recent work has not only deliberately opened up to humble, cheap materials, but also to his surroundings and to the stretch of time. Through splicing, inlaying, adhesion and penetration, Xiong Yanjun fuses various materials together to form an "organic" integrated composition. Genetically, they almost erase the distinction between painting, sculpture and installation.

Xiong Yanjun feels like a craftsman making fake cultural relics. Although the forms of the products are different from the cultural relics, they have some similar logic. It became increasingly clear that Xiong Yanjun was always looking for "conflict" before. It was spatial to try to build an unified framework in the relationship of opposites and juxtapositions. What the artist is doing now is integration, giving up the creation of equality, conflict and contrast, and pursuing compliance with nature, allowing thoughts, emotions, materials and behaviors to take place in a relatively free and unstructured time, and precipitating something similar to "crystallization". Things infiltrate each other, including the variables of time. The temperament of the work also changed. Contrary to what he had done before, Xiong Yanjun tried to cover something again, to cover up and conceal, to make the work chaotic again, and at the same time to have face and inside, in an attempt to evoke some missing meaning.

Xiong Yanjun was born in China in 1977. He graduated from Anhui Normal University in Hehei with a B.A. in 2001; and from The Institute of Fine Art, Nanjing University with an M.F.A. in 2008. Currently, he lives and works in Wuhu, China.