On February 26, 2023, “Resonance Between Text, Code and Perception: Three Perspectives of Medium in Art Practice”—the selected project of the 2021 Young Curator Support Program of National Art Museums organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism commenced at the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (abbr. CAFAM).

“Medium” has always appeared in the form of evolution, presenting challenges and creating new possibilities. In the current complex artistic media landscape, the two-dimensional media that hold a significant history is still widely passed on, and the media supported by interdisciplinary technologies also provide more specific solutions for the possibility of artistic expression. As for current media reality, we cannot simply look upon new and old iterations dominated by the concept of technological progress. What can be used by art creators are media that were born in the form of collective existence in the past. In the cognition of art, media were once regarded as tools but today artificial intelligence, neuroscience, communication engineering and other more in-depth disciplines and technologies are developed under the principles of cybernetics and have become increasingly popular in the context of Internet technology, thus the social operation system has turned to a multi-centered mechanism of multi-point interaction, participation, connection, and sharing, which is shaping or has already shaped our current sensible reality. It is like a mysterious atmosphere in the air, hidden and ubiquitous, once you want to touch it, it will immediately disperse into the specific disciplines leaving no trace. At the same time, the creative rise of technologies such as artificial intelligence has also brought panic and ethical concerns to human intelligence. Should we praise, criticize, or coexist harmoniously? What role does the media play in the artists’ thinking system, what has changed, and what is permanent ?

This exhibition is composed of three parts: the new aura of perception, the performance of the silent, and the life of the computer. It tries to impress the creators who are confronted with so many complex technological realities through the observation of the perspective of the media in artistic practices. In the process, we have a subtle comprehension of the history and characteristics of media, which involves the restoration of the language of the so-called old media, the expansion of artistic expression and a dimension of concern, and the allegory and reflection on the future of technology.

The exhibition showcases the works by six young artists including Geng Xue, Pu Yingwei, Wang Yuyang, Wu Ziyang, Qiu Yu and Gao Wenqian as research samples. The work of each artist/group involves different dimensions in media thinking and expression. This multiplicity reflects the multiple and complex states of artistic creation as experienced in today’s epoch. Artists who have their works displayed in this exhibition start from the media and methods they have worked with, and they try to build a comprehensive experience of the exhibition with text, image, video and media which have their respective visual characteristics, hoping to observe how artists start from different media characteristics, complete the expression of their own perceptive experience, and show the outline, deduction and fictional thoughts they want to describe.

What is pursued by art is a world of significance that depends on individual experience. In the reflection and discussion on the relationship between “media” and art, artists continue to explore through the “disenchantment” of technology and the “aura” of perception, and they further use technologies to constantly open up new awareness of the world. They keep looking for the ladder leading to the world of significance in the “reality” that built together.

About the Exhibition

Duration: February 26–March 23, 2023

Venue: Gallery on the Fourth Floor of CAFAM

Exhibition Directors: Zhang Zikang and Han Wenchao

Academic Chair: Li Jun

Exhibition Coordinators: Wang Chunchen and Gao Gao

Curator: Wang Jing

Artists: Geng Xue, Pu Yingwei, Wang Yuyang, Wu Ziyang, Qiu Yu and Gao Wenqian

Courtesy of CAFA Art Museum, trans. and ed. by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.