The new exhibition of APSMUSEUM, Art Within Reach II, co-hosted by Art Pioneer Studio and L+Mall Shanghai, officially opened on February 25, 2024. Produced by Robin Wong, the exhibition invites Professor Xu Zidong as the curator. The exhibition is the second half of the Art Within Reach exhibition series, aiming to fuse contemporary art into daily life with Chinese modern style as always.

Written by Xu Zidong

Art within Reach, seeing thoughts without words.

Art within Reach, is one of the forms of contemporary art and, therefore, possesses some basic characteristics of it.

First, in contrast to conventional realism, which holds that all things can infinitely converge to the objective reality, it does not view mimesis as the ultimate goal. What is appearance? What is reality? Contemporary art reveals different types of reality from diverse perspectives, points of view, seasons, even various times of day.

Second, contemporary art does not pursue the romanticism of the 19th century, in which a large cast of characters assembles in a passionate scene to narrate a particular historical moment. Naturally, contemporary art has its passions, but most of them are not fully expressed; similarly, its imaginations exist, but they are generally more restrained. It is what Wordsworth referred to as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility”. Thus, it is more related to everyday life with less myth and legend.

Thirdly, contemporary art is also, generally speaking, less concerned with narrative. The intriguing part of contemporary art is often found in the material and the creation process rather than the image or the aesthetic effect. Therefore, contemporary art tends to be less interested in the “sublime”, less in awe of the great rivers and seas, less enamored of heroic legends, and less obsessed with overcoming great hardship and challenges. Themes such as the vicissitudes of time and life are usually presented in contemporary art in a more abstract way.

Art within Reach, is just a branch of contemporary art. In addition to the above-mentioned characteristics of contemporary art such as irreality, anti-romanticism, and light narrative, Art within Reach, shows less grotesque, absurd, or abstract aesthetics (deformity, grotesqueness, and abstraction are the basic characteristics of contemporary art in general). The art is more concerned with figurative details, material texture, and juxtaposition.

Art within Reach, does not necessarily have to be seen in the white cube. They quietly meld into our daily lives rather than narrating legends. They don’t dazzle like sunshine, but quickly melt into our family ethics. The delicate line separating real life and artwork is seriously questioned by Art within Reach. From a historical perspective, this is the post-modernist trend of planarization and fragmentation, a subversion of the modernist norms of fine arts. In the context of Chinese society, it also represents a shift from grand narratives to the ideological underpinnings of day-to-day life.

From grand narratives to everyday life, that is the key phrase here.

However, APSMUSEUM’s attention to the Art within Reach art pieces is not necessarily out of sensitivity to the shifting of ideological trends but indeed out of a “classical” interest in contemporary art.

In college textbooks, aesthetic norms from ancient times to the present are often roughly classified into four categories: the beautiful (autumn moon over a placid lake, etc.), the sublime (the picturesque, etc.), the parody (irony, and satire), and the ugly (for example, The Stagnant Ditch by Wen Yiduo). In general, traditional art tends to focus more on the sublime and the beautiful, whereas contemporary art is more tolerant of the ridiculous and the ugly (magical, exaggerated, grotesque, distorted, etc.). However, at least in this exhibition of APSMUSEUM, we noticed that the collector has a tenacious interest in beauty, in addition to taking into account the artistic achievements, stylistic traits, and market reputation of emerging and established artists. Contemporary art, yes, is always abstract, always challenging, always subverting the norm, but can it not, at the same time (or even in the first place) be beautiful?

Art Within Reach I focuses more on interior environments, while Art Within Reach II steps forward, searching for the connection between interior and exterior spaces, between family and nature—strolling outwards into a traditional Chinese garden, where you could find nature is within arm’s reach: the Artificial Rock by Zhan Wang, and the mountain Heaven on Earth by Miao Tong. Tobias Rehberger’s vase is a typical kind of art “within reach”—the bouquet symbolizes nature; while the “pot belly” of the vase literally implies the artist’s body. Above the Soil (Iridescent Blue Green) by Yang Xinguang refers to the simple yet sophisticated open space of freedom. Jane Edden framed insect fragments in her Tapir Variations and Naturalist’s Library, works that mounted a sense of lively lovely cruelty.

Shi Guowei’s Growing and Richard Long’s Sahara Footprint, Egypt, both expand their horizons to the external, where so-called nature is marked everywhere by human trampling. Hanging nature on the wall or leaving a trail of footprints in nature are two paths intercommunicating that will eventually lead to the elongation of contemporary art, as seen in Giovanni Ozzola’s Trino, a glimpse of the sea through a decaying interior, or a modernist painting on sea view adorning an interior.

Zhao Zhao’s In Extremis No.11 is an even more extreme example of this artistic approach, in which the scattered image of a cat crushed on an asphalt road depicts the love-rape relationship between modern civilization and nature. Wang Gongxin’s Look On documents the ways in which this relationship is documented; Chen Xiaodan’s Bloom encapsulates our delusion that nature could be encapsulated.

As our excursion in the exhibition is drawing to an end, it seems that we have come back indoors. Carsten Höller locked a mushroom in a display cabinet. The fluorescent cat of Kiki Smith seems to reveal its organs, cells, and neural structure. A dress assembled from ceramic tiles by Zhanna Kadyrova brings back the cozy ambiance of the exhibition Art Within Reach I, so does the delicate doll by Pascale Marthine Tayou, a pill by Damien Hirst who is obsessed with pathology, the whimsical fairytale-like character Vegetable-Head by Chihiro Nakahara, and Chen Wei’s starkly critical Stones and Eggs.

In fine, “Art within Reach” steps outwards to have a freakishly close encounter with nature before returning to the interior spaces. Renovation by Ren Lingfei is a collage of family photos, leaving a warm ending to the exhibition.

Whether lingering in the room or ambling outdoors, Art within Reach would reveal thoughts and beauty without the need for narrative.

Xu Zidong

MA (East China Normal); MA (UCLA); PhD (HKU)
Vice president of Chinese Association for Theory of Literary and Art, Honorary Professor of School of Chinese at University of Hong Kong, Zijiang Chair Professor of East China Normal University, former Head of Department of Chinese at Lingnan University. Prof. Xu has published extensively on modern and contemporary Chinese literature including New Perspectives on Yu Dafu, Collective Memory: Remembering to Forget, Close Readings of Eileen Chang, and Revisiting 20th-century Chinese novels.

Beginning at 16:30 on February 25, 2024, the vernissage has attracted numerous professionals in the cultural and artistic fields as well as media and art enthusiasts. The curator Professor Xu Zidong, artists Zhang Wang, Wang Gongxin, Chen Xiaodan, Zhou Xiaohu, and Ten Lingfei delivered opening speeches. Artists Ding Yi, Huang Yuanqing, Liao Liao, Lv Hongliang, etc. were all present.