The first solo exhibition of young artist, Jin Junjie, was unveiled on November 18, 2017, at Space Station. The exhibition presents dozens of pieces of abstract paintings created by Jin in the past year, comprehensively showing the unique artistic oeuvre independently explored by him since the graduation from the Department of Public Art at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. Before working with Space Station, Jin’s works have been selected in a handful of group exhibitions, including Today Art Museum, Guangxi Art Museum, Shandong Art Museum and many other academic institutions; with the distinctive style and unique approach, Jin has become one of the most noteworthy young artists.

The exhibition is titled as “The Blue Hole” that originates from a special ocean phenomenon: the roughly circular, steep-walled depressions, named for the dramatic contrast between the dark blue, deep waters of their depths and the lighter blue of the shallows around them, were caused by rising sea level during past ice ages; and like, looking down from above, blue holes on the surface of the earth, or eyes, or wounds – these diverse images encourage different imaginations, so that the blue hole has become a synonym of the mysterious. This coincided with the independent exploration of Jin for abstract painting: he buzzed over to apply the predetermined pigments to the canvas layer by layer, and then destroyed the stability and order of the painting in the course of digging holes, in which the unexpected results inspired the artist to repeat this adventure. Jin was obsessed with bold adventures in exploring peculiar visual language without fear of trial and error, as deep-sea divers obsessed with wonders of the blue hole. The unforeseen outcome is an increasingly strengthened belief in life: sneak into the depths of the sea and return safely.

Although Jin’s career was intermittent for more than one reason, he never gave up the unremitting exploration of the basic motif of painting. Through continuous discussion on various issues like parallax, light and shadow, and somatosensory in painting, he gradually developed a type of “not paint” style of creation and used it to reflect on traditional painting methods, providing a new untapped possibility for painting. In contrast to the object-oriented programming in the traditional painting, Jin broke away from the limitation of creation on a plane by the complicated process of superimposing different colors of acrylic layers in a certain thickness and engraving them, which metaphorically refer to a diachronic record and elaboration. Therefore, the creation consists not in a concrete stroke at an isolated moment, but a self-contained system whose continuity constitutes the rare organic sense and spirituality in Jin’s paintings. Moreover, the countless dots carved out in the intense physicality solidifies into a three-dimensional shape displaying the transformation from 2D to 3D -- the masterstroke that makes Jin’s logic of creation visualized.

This exhibition lasts until January 3, 2018.

About the exhibition

Dates: 2017.11.18 – 2018.1.3

Venue: Space Station

Courtesy of the artist and Space Station.