Pekin Fine Arts is pleased to host their first solo exhibit project with Beijing artist Yang Dongxue. Dongxue works with sculptural and sound installation and watercolor drawings, focusing mainly on the artist’s perpetual struggle to express oneself honestly – and accurately?– to the audience, and inevitably falling short. Dongxue’s practice is marked by a deep ambivalence toward art production and his role as a player in the contemporary art scene. He sees himself as a “dedicated” and “serious” artist who is painfully aware of the futility of such dedication and seriousness.

He aims to illustrate the prelude to art production, rather than the result or objects of such production. His focus is on the thought involved in “making stuff”, while knowing that such artist produced iterations will never fully meet the artist’s expectations. Shifting the focus away from the outcome, Dongxue aims at demonstrating his thought-process prior to giving birth to the object. The conscious and subconscious act of conceiving the artwork is the focal point for Dongxue.

Artist Statement:

I am often obsessed with the existential meaning of artwork creation and the act of editing one’s consciousness.

And I am torn between the mutual limitations of the existential meaning of consciousness and how one conjures up such things.

We have fabricated such meanings and adopted them as maps of our behaviours.

The images presented in this exhibition consist of records of raw materials waiting to be assigned meaning.

These images are produced subconsciously. Most of them are collected and edited instinctively.

For me, these images’ significance will diminish in the process of fabrication, and what remains are incomplete understandings and insufficient meanings.

What one sees in the art produced will be no more than traces of emotion and subconscious musings.

These artworks are proof I am labouring on behalf of my subconscious.

Yang Dongxue, Beijing, Jan. 2014

About the exhibition

Dates: 25 Jan - 15 Mar, 2014

Opening Hour: Tue - Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-6pm, closed on Monday and Sunday

Courtesy of the artist and Pekin Fine Arts, for further information please contact info@pekinfinearts.com or (852) 2177 6190 for more information.