Main Exhibition of 2022 Beijing Biennale: THE INFINITE CONVERSATION

Curator：Zhu Zhu

Assistant Curator：Li RongWei

Exhibition Venue：National Base for International Cultural Trade (Beijing) 3 Tianzhujinhang East Road, Shunyi District, Beijing

Dates：2022.12.30—2023.3.12

 

The essence of art can be understood as conversations in innumerable forms: conversations of the artist with him/herself and with others, conversations with art history, humanities and many other disciplines, conversations with nature, history, reality and future, as well as conversations between the finite and the infinite. Great and genuine artworks can go beyond different eras, backgrounds and limitations, engage direct and spiritual dialogues with the mind of future generations and inspire human society on a better or even brand-new mode of living together. The exhibition consists of three chapters:

 

Presence of Aura

 

This chapter focuses on the intervention of digital images on personal experiences: digital technology has brought about the possibility of sharing global image resource across places, times, and fields, but also led to their flooding and overproduction. The reflection, reuse and reconstruction of the heritage of art history saturated with what Walter Benjamin describes as “Aura”, and digital images continuously derived today constitute an important dimension and methodology for artists to interpret and narrate their personal experience.

 

Inhabiting the Ever Living Soil

 

This chapter focuses on the intervention of the ecological environment on the process of artistic generation: just as human beings and nature have always maintained an unbreakable bond, the environmental changes individuals and communities face with in their growth, habitats, or migrations have always been an important theme in art, which also involves the reflection on modernity and the society of the spectacle. Artists tend to work in a more comprehensive way, combining and extending to the dimensions of field survey, historical archaeology, and more. Creative form, on the other hand, is not only reflected in the selection and application of local materials but also in creation that combines natural forces, such as climate, wind power, water flow, cultivation process, and other elements, so that the works themselves constitute a mixed ecosystem.

 

Multi-dimensional Perspective

 

This chapter focuses on the intervention of natural disciplines on artistic concepts: historical achievements and latest discoveries from mathematics, physics, astronomy, life sciences, and other fields, via the translation and imagination of artists, with the evolution of medium and technology of expression, echo and unveil different layers of the world in various visual manifestations that contains conjectures about the future and metaphysical order.

 

In our exhibition hall, 1F is for the first chapter “Presence of Aura”, 2F and 3F are for the second chapter “Inhabiting the Ever Living Soil”, and 4F is for the third chapter “Multidimensional Perspective”.