Hive Center for Contemporary Art presents Ji Xin’s upcoming solo exhibition, “Trance Afternoon.” This exhibition will be on view at Gallery A from Sept. 11 to Nov. 7, 2021. “Trance Afternoon” is curated by Zhao Xiaodan. This is Ji Xin’s fourth solo exhibition at Hive after “Nightingale (2014),” “Interval (2016),” “Vanished Eden (2018),” featuring his latest work from the past two years.

Ji Xin, At Daybreak, 2021, Oil on canvas,165×190cm

The nostalgia manifested in Ji Xin’s work is a mourning of the idealized past. His work encompasses the ambiance of self-sufficiency and tranquility and the expression of idealized femininity, hinting at a past fantasized in retrospect. This past is redemption and liberation from reality, escaping from it while displaying internal confinement. Bergson believes that one’s self is not a static objective but a dynamic process filled with change. In Greek, ekstasis is considered a removal from self; Plotinus describes it as a state of transformation. From a neurological perspective, during this mechanism, in which transient hypofrontality of the prefrontal cortex is accompanied by an unconscious, intense activity, the nerves are interwoven and interconnected, producing an experience at a rate a thousand times faster than the normal state of the agency. This experience offers an entrance outside of time or the depths of the present.

Ji Xin, Beside the Lake, 2021, Oil on canvas, 190×240cm

The figures of Ji Xin’s work stroll from “Interval” to the front of the stage. The pandemic’s impact on the trajectory of life is intertwined with the shifting in the appearance of Ji’s work, mixed with his understanding of the colors of life. A bright, dazzling tone of the Middle Ages miniature is attached to a body that is both mundane and divine. Undeniably, the balanced classical composition and active control of the color scale constitute a causality between Renaissance Italian and Dutch paintings and Ji Xin’s work. In his work, the artist retains the clarity and cohesion of borderline while renouncing the excessive transitional mid-tone of the classical ambiance in his portrayal of figures. Here, Ji Xin does not aim to depict a veristic reality but a being with a complete outline, i.e., a symbol.

Ji Xin, Purple and Blue, 2021, Oil on canvas, 120×90cm

Along the passage of Ji Xin’s practice, we enter a trance that keeps blossoming in reality. This experience is like reading a novel, where the elements provided in the text are transformed by the reader into concrete existence, a provisional sanctuary, a mirror, or an experience of self-verification after simulating the existence of the other. The brief moment that most people endure through narrow passages is, for Ji Xin, a vast landscape worth exploring. Almost out of his desire for certainty, Ji Xin painted the rooms and the symbolism of the rooms just right; everything is within reach. Painting becomes a reality created by him in seek of the truth through the haze of modernity. In this process, the distinctively personal, increasingly pellucid world introduced by the artist elaborates in front of us.

About the exhibition

Curator: Zhao Xiaodan

Opening: 2021.9.11

Exhibition Dates: 2021.9.11 - 2021.11.7

Venue: Hive Center for Contemporary Art

Address: E06, 798 Art District, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Hive Center for Contemporary Art presents the debut solo exhibition, “Das Un/Heimliche,” of Joey Xia at Galleries B and C in Beijing. This exhibition focuses on the artist’s latest work of needlework paintings and sculptures. Born in Hangzhou, China, in 1992, Joey Xia received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois in 2016. He currently lives and works in Shanghai.

Joey Xia’s work engages with issues related to his peer, culture and art history under the backdrop of an unfathomable globalization. His practice is exploring the transition and mutation of the culture symbol through a psychoanalytic manner. Xia’s practice are accumulations of material, texture and form, fused together with a mixture of craft-based techniques, which he sees as materials of utterance in themselves – to expressing emotion and tension simultaneously.

Joey Xia, GEAR-Forging, 2021, Oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 120×90cm

“Das Un/Heimliche” is a mythic and animistic contemporary allegorical dimension created by Joey Xia in response to the cultural and geopolitical context that he finds himself trapped. The German title “Das Un/Heimliche” suggests that the artist tries to represent our mundane experience as an “uncanny duplicate”. As the etymological significance of “unheimlich” implied, the contradictions between domestication and savagery, intimacy and horror, are the underlaying of the allegories in this exhibition.

Joey Xia, TBR-Atavism, 2021, Oil, acrylic on canvas, Kevlar line, 143×96cm

Stitching as a distinct technical method in needlework painting and the underlying creative logic of structuralism are used by Joey to fabricate and recreate a practice that can permeate through the systems of signification. The mutual mapping of canonical and realistic phenomena that emerge in the narrative of the work, as well as the fetishistic episode and the culture and fabrication maneuver that go beyond materials, are the Ariadne’s thread tied around the viewer’s wrist by Joey Xia in order to enter the visual labyrinth he has meticulously designed while he attempts to organize the fabrication and mutation of symbols in the current social and cultural contexts.

Joey Xia, TBR-Reading Room and Chair, 2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 141×93cm

The two galleries are visually associated by the pattern of wood grain. Compared to the constraint and violence of stitching, the appearance of the wood grain undertakes the role of mediation and pacification. From the artist’s perspective, the cross-section of wood is one of the earliest natural textures institutionalized by mankind. As a shared memory of the collective unconscious in survival and production, woodwork is also the most ordinary and familiar vehicle for human transformation of self and environment. Like Joey stated：In this exhibition, the woodgrain painting series creates and enacts the imagery examination of the collective unconscious through the collaging of wooden texture. And under this modular system, the woodgrain painting can constantly multiplied and connected to endue the weight of pneuma and support the scope of the psyche.

About the exhibition

Curator: Yang Jian

Opening: 2021.9.11 16:00

Exhibition Dates: 2021.9.11 - 2021.11.7

Venue: Hive Center for Contemporary Art

Address: E06, 798 Art District, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Courtesy the artists and Hive Center for Contemporary Art.