White Space Beijing is a professional art gallery lays its focus on promoting contemporary Chinese art onto the international stage. In 2009, it moved to Caochangdi Art Zone, beginning to seek out and promote young emerging artists at home and abroad. White Space Beijing is pleased to announced the opening of three exhibitions featuring latest works by Zhai Liang, Yang Jian and Hu Qingtai on November 23.

ZHAI LIANG | Catalogue-The Library of Babel

Opening: 4PM, November 23. Date: November 23, 2013 - January 25, 2014

Catalogue - The Library of Babel showcases Zhai Liang’s latest works on canvas and paper. The universe may exist in unexpected details, or in the personal encyclopedia  The Night Ferry written by Zhang Dai in Ming Dynasty. Non-logical memories mix with knowledge, each entry contains a “one-sided” perception – Zhai Liang’s world of memories is constructed by such elements. It may also be compared to Borges’  The Library of Babel, where people spend their lifetimes to search for a certain book that represents “the sum of all” in a library reaching the infinitive height. A book including everything, or a library including everything – “a certain book” could be the book in the similar fashion of  The Night Ferry.

The artist reproduces the process of somebody searches for a certain book in a library, reconstructs the text through analyzing characters, absurdity, history, appearance, different classes, and space (similar to the structure in The Night Ferry), forms a “visual knowledge catalogue”. This is merely the content part of the certain “book” somebody just found, and this exhibition is the “content” of the artist’s project as well. The setting of the “content” derives from the concepts – to reproduce a certain “book” in a “l(fā)ibrary” that include everything.

Zhai Liang was born in Shanxi Province in 1983. He graduated from Oil Painting Department, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2006. In 2009, he received a Master’s Degree from Oil Painting Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts. Zhai now lives and works in Beijing.

YANG JIAN | Are We More Stupid Than Before?

Opening: 4PM, November 23. Date: November 23, 2013 - January 25, 2014

Are we more stupid than before? A question that is difficult and unnecessary to answer. Various roles and representations, as well as methods of applications of human “stupidities” are ubiquitous in the exhibition in the disguises of poetic revolt, unavoidable tragic reality, and so on. “Stupidity” has nothing to do with intelligence - it is generated from opposition. The dilemma of each generation expects the generation to begin a new beginning. People are always new, yet history is always old, this remains true through the past, present and the future.

This is Yang Jian’s second exhibition at WHITE SPACE BEIJING after “SIMPLE MECHANICAL”, showcasing latest practice over the past one year.Yang Jian was born in Fujian Province in 1982. He graduated from Fine Art Departments of Art College, Xiamen University. Yang now works and lives in Beijing.

HU QINGTAI Project: BROTHER/ LI GANG/LI LIAO/JIANG BO/YANG JIAN/YANG XINGUANG/ZENG HONG/ZHAN RUI

Opening: 4PM, November 23, Date: November 23, 2013 - January 25, 2014

Since 2010, Hu Qing Tai has been collecting eight artists' project plans through buying or providing labor service exchanges. He then followed the plans strictly, and actualized all of them by himself.

As the first comprehensive presentation of this project, the resources and ways of buying for the works will be public, as well as the communication, negotiation and selection Hu conducted with the other artists. The experiment and practice have crossed the boundary of artists’ collaborations, even disobeys the existing commercial rules - deprivation of artists' copyrights, and providing Hu Qing Tai opportunities to practice and play various roles in the art system. The entire project is co-entitled under the eight collected artists' names, in order to avoid the required "creativity" to the role of artists and to keep a distance between their practice and "creation", hence to emphasize the importance of "doing" in the production of art.

Hu Qing Tai was born in Hei Long Jiang Province in 1985. He graduated from Video Media Department of Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. Hu now lives and works in Beijing.

Courtesy of the artists and White Space Beijing.