This is the second solo exhibition of artist He Xun at A⁺?Contemporary. Featuring He Xun’s latest “Juxtaposed Practices” painting series, as well as the interlacing installation and sound elements, the exhibition invites viewers to step inside a mythic, ritual wonderlust where visual, audio, and three-dimensional space unfold a sacred conversation. Yet simultaneously, the outsiders who enter into this scene become the voyeurs that take active participations within. The exhibition will remain on view until July 1^st.

Continuing with He Xun’s exploration of “Juxtaposed Practices” from the previous exhibition “Rural Rhapsody”, He Xun borrows the linguistic principle of rhyme, reusing and applying it into his painterly practices, through which the juxtaposition between the two relatively associated, yet separately independent paintings become the main characters of this ritual, forming into a narrative. In this shift of trajectory, the painter thus steps behind and turns into merely a mediator that connects the two paintings. Whispering in soft tones, staring with the affectionate eyes, the artist moves in between and takes positions of different characters. Sometimes a “painter”, a “poet” or a “curator”, sometimes a “detective”, a “wanderer” , or a “performer”, through these character incarnations and action transmutations, He Xun personifies these works, granting them with moods, emotions and thoughts, and carefully silhouetting the subtle variations and interrelations that reside inside. Through which he reinvestigates and probes the conditions of paintings and their modes of comprehension.

For example, the “Juxtaposition Practices” pair “Morandi-Early Winter” and “Morandi-Deep Autumn” takes positions of two lovers who’ve known each other for a long time. “Early Winter” is a man, a painter, a poet; romantic, exquisite, gloomy yet fragile, he loves good deeds, life, the beauty of thinking, and the game of languages, who inherits the temperament of a lunar moon. “Deep Autumn” is a woman, as if the Venues, who defines beauty; lively, warm and cheerful, she is the zealous fan for outer planet foreign civilizations, who is given the temperament of a solar sun. The intimate whispering conversations that hide within these works thus place an enigmatic puzzle to the viewers, yet they could also be read as a form of self-expression that the “oracle” thinks most suitable for himself, nevertheless, they provide infinite endless possibilities for us, the “intruders”, to unravel this ritual conversation.

The stone gates that erect solely in the primeval open landscape, the deity-statues-like lion stone monuments that flank silently aside; the lunar eclipse that takes place secretly in the vast night sky; the ancient scale balance that lies tranquilly inside the seclusion of a wise elderly man, In the mist of this primordial, solemn, serene and mythic realm, He Xun further uses the elements of stairs and sounds with a clever twist, transforming the exhibition space into a primitive sacred land. As if the steep stone pathway on a mountainous slope, the “The Stairs that are Used as Pillars” subtly delivers a revered feeling, when we happen to step on it, in between the moments of ascend and descend, the whole view of the paintings unfolds in front of our eyes. This is another hidden landscape, inhabiting within, we seem to become the oracle, that overviews this secret paradise in stillness. Simultaneously, as if the chanting mantra, the humming sounds of reciting transmitted from the headsets, are thus delivered to us as the ancient prophecy, unraveling the conversations formed between the paintings-the scriptures of these oracle letters-to us. In the interplay between sound and perspectives, we witness and experience the rites that take place in this sacred ritual performance, as if a calling from afar, a long-lost quest for veneration slowly returns in this solemn ritual.

About Artists

He Xun was born in 1984 in Jiangxi. Graduated from the Department of Education, China Academy of Art with a BA in Fine Arts?in 2006, He Xun currently works and lives in Beijing. His selected solo exhibitions include: The Second Oracle (A⁺Contemporary, Shanghai, 2018) (Upcoming) , Pearls of Citta(Enclave Independent Publishing House, Shenzhen, 2017), Rural Rhapsody (A⁺ Contemporary, Shanghai, 2016), Hive · Becoming I: Empty Baggage (Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013). His selected group exhibitions include: Wandering (Power Long Art Center, Hangzhou, 2018) , Go Live (Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Art, Nanjing, 2018), Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture Collaboral Exhibition- Ideals on the Move(Sally Project, Shenzhen, 2017), I Could See The Smallest Things(Antenna Space, Shanghai, 2017), JungleⅢ-Common (Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, 2017), Hina’s scroll (SZ Art Center, Beijing, 2017), parentheses (Platform China·dRoom, Beijing, 2017), The Dilemmas of Painting (organized by A⁺Contemporary, Asia Art Center, Beijing,2017), Heiqiao Generation, (Hi Art Center, Beijing,2017), Go Live (Tong Gallery+Projects, Beiing, 2016) , □(organized by A⁺ Contemporary, Asia Art Center Taipei I + II, Taipei, 2016), Utopia & Beyond (Castello di Rivara Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2016), Winter Discovery (A Thousand Plateaus Art Space,Chengdu, 2016) , The Twelve Paintings (L-Art Gallery, Chengdu, 2015) , Paratissima 11 (Paratissima, Italy, 2015), Concept and Language in Painting Process (Right View Art Museum, Beijing, 2015), Shanghai Deal (Radical Space, Shanghai, 2015), Happening at the Very Moment – Performance Art in the Contemporary Society (Kong Contemporary Art Agency, Beijing, 2015), Sovrapposizioni Di Immagini (Casa Dei Carraresi Museum, Italy, 2015), Art Discovery (L’OFFICIEL Art Space, Beijing, 2015), The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (Pekin Gallery, Beijing, 2015), The Cabinet of Wonder (HeiQiao Art District, Beijing, 2015), Wind Veers to the East – BOAO Asian Art Exposition (BOAO Asian Style Plaza, Hainan, 2015) , Drawing Stars Overseas – History and Culture Exhibition of Sino-African Maritime Silk Road (Tanzania National Museum, Dar es Salaam, 2014) , BBCT (MAMALA Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, 2014) , Carnival–Hei Qiao Artist Community (Mizuma and One Gallery, Beijing, 2012) , Clumsy Birds Have to Do an Early Start–Contemporary Art Exhibition (China Academy of Art Exhibition Hall, Hangzhou, 2005).

About the exhibition

Dates: May? 19 – Jul. 1, 2018

Opening: May? 19 (Sat.)? 4pm

Venue: A⁺?Contemporary

Courtesy of the artist and A⁺?Contemporary, for further information please visit http://apluscontemporary.org.