Platform China presents the second solo exhibition of Qiu Ruixiang "Rabbit, Den and Barn"?, after Portrait of Self in June 2014. The exhibition is on view from March 17 through April 30, 2017. In the curator Lu Mingjun’s perspective,the artist has been seeking for a possible “idea” during the past three-year “repetitive labor work”. Such an “idea” is not referring to others; it’s about himself.
As always, Qiu rarely appears in the public, nor cares about what is happening in the society. He was lost in his own world, maintaining an indifference attitude and a moderate rhythm. In the exhibition, an obvious change is that Qiu tries to get rid of a simple visual depth, seeking for a flat effort. Because the backgrounds were painted in single color, the figures and objects in fore ground are isolated, not dominated by single visual system at all, the interweave of multiple dimensions form a fundamental structure. This kind of methodology originates neither from any particular reasons, nor someone’s influence; it is literally inspired by his own repetitive and serial practices. Such amethodology is also unique in the art history. To Qiu, repetition is a habit that closes to his daily routine rather than any conceptual practices. He considers it as an ordinary and usual “repetitive labor”.
Rabbit, Den and Barn?are common themes throughout Qiu’s works, which are inspired by his life experience and memories in reference to the artist’s work and life. We can build a chain among these three factors: artist, painting (methodology) and daily life. But to Qiu, their relationships are always in a dilemma. No matter how the form and color is simple or how dark thetone is, it could be a bigoted personality or a cognitive limitation. But, we also find these figures are far away from their original meanings and symboliclogic in his continual, repetitive practices and experiments. They act as objective things or props on his “Mini Stage”. Sometimes, they are forced to be in a pure formal system. Maybe, this is an important step that he gets rid of dilemma and “l(fā)imitation”. Ironically, he also enjoy such a “dilemma” and“l(fā)imitation”.About the exhibition
Dates: Mar 17, 2017 – Apr 30, 2017
Venue: Platform China
Courtesy of the artist and Platform China, for further information please visit www.platformchina.org.
