Chen Xi (b.1985) uses drawing and animation to tentatively deconstruct, dissect and reassemble societal values. Animation is a limitless narrative approach, allowing freedom from academic and philosophical systems that have become obsolete; it is an escape from the firmly entrenched system, an indulgence in a paradise interwoven with reality and illusions. Founded upon the concept of the infinitely large “∞”, this exhibition adopts the reciprocal relations of works into installation’s arrangement format, echoing Chen’s unique practice in the midst of creation. It requires tens of hours for the calculator to compute an animation from the initial modeling, the idle hours in between are often appropriated to the production of other works. This peculiar tendency to create multiple works simultaneously has spawned an intricately complex web of time, allowing the exchange between works to mimic the “∞” symbol, like the two rings that influence and react to one another, inciting an infinitely large illusory state.

The works selected for the exhibition extract and edit inundated mainstream elements, and seal it with a narrative that perfectly packages and illustrates the human society while the virtual world of numbers reflect contractions and paradoxes of reality. If the audience is satisfied by these fabricated and tampered concepts that seem ostensibly logical, then perhaps the reality is as askew and distorted? These “mock ethics,” derived from vulgar humor, exposes this mad civilization with ridicules, depicting the origin and history of the fleeting human life. In the end, as oneself is critically observed, a dissonance in viewers’ awareness ensues.

About the artist

Chen Xi was born in 1985 in Wuhan, China. He graduated from Jiangnan University in 2008, and later graduated with Master’s Degree from East China Normal University in 2012. He currently works and lives in Beijing. His solo exhibitions include: ∞ (A⁺Contemporary, Shanghai, 2016), Preserved Wilderness (307, Beijing, 2015), Perception of home (Home Inn, Beijing, 2014), New Works by Chen Xi (Museum of East China Normal University, Shanghai, 2009). He’s selected group exhibitions include: Community of Celibates(Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, 2016), Evolution of Model (A⁺Contemporary, Shanghai, 2015), Absurd Utopias-Cine City (Brighton Film Festival, Brighton, United Kingdom, 2015), Ode to Joy (Star Gallery, Beijing, 2015), Ministry of Truth II: The Factitious and its Realm (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2014), Design Shanghai (PSA, Shanghai, 2013), Nonexistent Reality (Chambers Fine Art, Beijing, 2013), Time Of The Dragon (Rauma Art Museum, Finland, 2012), The New Directions: Young Chinese Contemporary Artists (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, 2012), Art exchange with Arkansas State University (Museum of Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, 2011), Pattern-Vortex-Encounter (Space station, Beijing, 2011).

About the exhibition

Date: May 21 – July 4, 2016

Venue: A⁺ Contemporary

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