If you don’t visit this exhibition, you cannot say that you are a Chinese, 2021

The central axis has been studied as an aesthetic form in many architectural plans in China and the West, and is often found in films and performances, such as those by Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, and Zhang Yimou. In addition to its aesthetic significance, the central axis is also a symbol of totalitarianism, power, strength, order, and normality. This exhibition sets the tone by first building a situation of extreme order in terms of volume. Huge symbolic works with meanings, lecterns, red plastic chairs, urinals, flamingos, music scores, and dreams are placed within a regular and solemn framework, all seemingly related and unrelated. It is hard to summarize what kind of situation this is. All the solemn elements are replaced, but the grand order is preserved; the meaning behind the mixed references is not directly related. We intend to create such an incestuous event for the viewer, where the urinal is in the solemn venue, next to the guests' seats; the microphone of the speech is replaced by a ping-pong ball... Decent performances and speeches are coexisting with real daily life that seems not public, but will something with metaphorical profound meaning still be valid in the absurd occasion? Will it still hold true? Or, perhaps, is the absurd and inane rationalized within a rational structure? All subjects construct an object in the way they understand it, and the objects in these spaces are repositioned for a particular narrative.

In the case of Chinese rural weddings, for example, the elaborate customs and extremely rigorous ritual processes of folk weddings have evolved since ancient times, from imitation of the court (Qing Dynasty and before) to aspiration to Western wedding customs (Republic of China) to emulation of weddings in the cities. There are many reasons, but in general, one of the common denominators is always a bluff and introverted out of the ordinary and thirsty. And this desire is not flamboyant but solemn and rigorous. The form has the aforementioned sense of decency, but the solemnity of the act of not belonging to its own part of the action is more like a play. Not only for village weddings, but also for most of the occasions where the role of a particular person in a particular capacity is non-daily, so it is somewhat subjective imitation and construction. The use of rainbow-shaped inflatable bladders for store openings as the front of the wedding scene and the interspersing of some un-Chinese and un-foreign rituals are visual examples that epitomize many contemporary phenomena. The intention is not to criticize the politics of discourse or to massage ideology: in the exhibition, instead of trying to play it as decent as possible, the artist goes to its opposite, to reinforce the sense of alienation in an occasion that seems harmonious and orderly. The conflict, the discord, the prying is another kind of reality. Just as public art intervenes in the field in a way that weakens the contradiction, in a fusion of glorification or in a choice that Richard Serra supports to break the harmony, the deliberate order sometimes serves to conceal the truth of disorder and chaos.

This exhibition may be founded on the construction and self-breaking at the same time. Each person has their own answer to the question of what is reasonable and what is not, and you and I are actors in the situation.