Self – Topography

This exhibition, themed “Self – Topography,” presents a collective showcase following artists’ long-term projects conducted across diverse terrains. Curator Wang Che and the participating artists traversed the Nujiang and Minjiang rivers in the Hengduan Mountains, the Yanshan Mountains, the Inner Mongolian grasslands, the Kubuqi Desert, Qinghai’s Black Gobi, the Qinghai – Tibet Plateau, as well as the entirety of Fujian Province, Suichang in Zhejiang, and Xinjiang. Against these landscapes, the exhibition space at Times Art Museum presents a corresponding topographical visual environment, gathering works by sixteen artists created within eight distinct terrains: mountains, rivers, grasslands, Gobi, plateaus, deserts, basins, and coastal regions.

The actions, experiences, and creations between self-opening and self-establishment form the overall structure of this exhibition. On one hand, the works express artists’ experiences of differentiation and vitality within diverse landscapes, alerting us to the dangers of secondhand knowledge and singular judgment while training our capacity for open engagement with the nature, culture, and history of different terrains. On the other hand, they internalize diverse visual and physical experiences into individual artistic expressions and personas.

“Self – Topography” simultaneously represents a journey toward diverse topographies to affirm the self, as well as an act of departure from and return to the art center. Interpreting the artist’s creations can be approached from various angles through understanding China’s diverse landscapes. Each creator possesses their own formative landscape environment, and each work carries its own geographical context. The myriad phenomena and human wisdom emerging from these environments provide diverse foundations for artistic interpretation, alongside the essential sensibility, intuition, and spiritual expression inherent in artistic creation.