This exhibition started with an idea about curation: it emphasises the communication via correspondence between the curator and the artists prior to the exhibition, which effectively interferes with the artists’ creative thinking. Xiang Jing was strongly against this concept-centered, logic-centered way of curation, and refrained from giving out any specific details about her work in her correspondence with the curator. In any case, Xiang Jing would have been unable to become concept-driven in her work. Ultimately, although this project did challenge Xiang Jing’s usual methodology, its product proved a special, almost unclassifiable instance in the artist’s creative track.
From Preface to the exhibition by curator Jiang Jiehong:
In this exhibition, 12 artists are invited to display their new creations in a relatively independent space. They will give their multi-dimensional interpretations on “guanxi” with their visual interpretations. The artists’ personal experience of sight, sound, touch and knowledge of life , has been realized in the parallel practices between textual communication and visual exhibition with the use of installations, video, sculpture, painting and “dialogue” pieces. With the positive interactions between curators and artists in the opening frame, this exhibition explores the unique significance of “guanxi” to the individual or the group.
Excerpts from Xiang Jing and Jiang Jiehong (curator)’s email correspondences: Art practice, to me, can only to be done within a closed environment. My personal thoughts are not even open to my assistants who are working with me every day. While I am making art, I can be extremely confident and sometimes quite adamant despite of any possible mistakes. I proceed towards the destination that I believe in without any hesitation. But it is different this time when I talk to you through emails. Our discussions seemingly help to articulate my ideas for the practice, but, how on earth could art practice need to be clarified before creating art?!
As an artist, my work is all about “ways of seeing”, to look at people around me, those in relation to me, and their difficult living predicaments and their flaws in human nature. And how they manage to survive despite of all these