The Personal Dimension: Four Emerging Artists from China Gao Lei, Jia Aili, Li Qing, Waza Group

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION The four artists in the exhibition are referred to as “The X Generation”, a generation born between the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s in the midst of a rapidly modernizing world bearing little relation to the social conditions of previous eras. The X Generation has been signified to reflect a disinterest with social politics, emphasizing the “self” and its interests, and have influenced the building of a new social position where individual perspective and self-government is thoughtfully realized.

Gao Lei, born in 1980, graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. In a new group of works, space is minimally structured through the use of lines and heightens a cultural surveillance as experienced in China. The repetitions of objects and the absurdist perspective of form is constricted within a given space, void of spirit and historical connotations. Works reflect a general who have lost touch with their past, nature and its organic systems of growth, and individual freedoms that separates one from the public and political. A paranoid anxiety-ridden sentiment emerges from the surveillance of even the most personal and private of our thoughts.

Jia Aili, born in 1979, graduated from Lu Xun Academy, a prestigious University with strong ties to the School of Social Realism. In oil paintings, epic and tragic drama are often the artist’s inclination, avoiding he recreation of specific historical moments. Narratives are intimate and private, reflecting the bases of the human condition as well as an artist’s vulnerability to fragility and incapability of harnessing a foundation amidst a fast-paced industrial society.

Li Qing, born in 1981 in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, graduated from China Academy of Art. His work reflects the juxtaposition between two similar subject matters or scenes occurring in mismatched chronology. The relation or tension between the two is usually the resource for concept of the work. His bold brush strokes whimsically manipulate visual experience and subject matter into a painterly game, a pictorial world that reflects changing reality.

WAZA group, is an emerging artist collective founded in 2002. Based in Wuhan, China, Hu Ge(b.1982,WuHan) and Wang Huan(b.1984,WuHan) utilize the collective as a platform for experimental new media art, creating large-scale sculptural installations that incorporate photography, video, sound, new media technology, site-specific video and sound projects.