Inverted Gaze: Group Exhibition

Arario Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition Inverted Gaze co-curated by curators LIN Ye and YUAN Jing, featuring recent works by artists CHEN Xin, GAO Jie, GAN Yingying, LIU Xi, TAO Yi, and Pocono ZHAO Yu. Viewers, through their works, will attempt to reexamine the world and human society full of power and rules from an inverted perspective, scrutinizing the highly ordered human society full of power and rules elsewhere, and searching for that primitive, soft but flexible, and inclusive "natural" world again. The exhibition will be on view from January 12, 2024 to March 2, 2024.

We are supposed to live in a "natural" world.

The so-called nature is a state of being, not only the state of nature with its mountains, rivers, flowers, birds, and fish, but also the natural and innate state of being human. In such a state, existing as a part of the world, all things are equal, interconnected, chaotic yet free.

However, we always believe in metaphysical existence, fetishize power and rules, and choose the means of evil - absolute control over the world - out of fear of danger. Not only controlling things, but also controlling people, creating all types of control systems based on patriarchy, forcibly banishing human nature, everyone is forced to learn to view everything through the eyes of the powerful, placing people into an endless network of competition.

We need an inverted perspective to reexamine the world, to understand human civilization anew, and to re-cultivate the nature of the self. The artists in this exhibition bring such an inverted perspective to their works. Through their works, we can enter a world that maintains the state of nature, a world that fully respects and recognizes the weak, a loose world with rich diversity, a holistic world that maintains differences and vulnerabilities, and a world full of soft and resilient vitality.

In Tao Yi's paintings, the human spirit is in harmony with the surrounding world, naturally generating an ethic of serendipity like music. Gan Yingying's photographs bring people back to a poetic and forgotten habitat, allowing us to feel a certain powerful vitality in the midst of a vast and unknown wilderness. Liu Xi's sculptures decisively dismantle the rigid and absolute vision that shrouds modern society, allowing people to reconstruct new standards and values from the seemingly broken conceptual world. In Pocono Zhao Yu's works, the female experience, once alienated by modernity, integrates with the world, reshaping a new, open-ended vision of life. In Gao Jie's works, every fragile, marginalized individual life receives the due attention and respect, prompting viewers to reflect on the luck, conflicts, and costs in their personal lives. Chen Xin transforms the other human temperament that women are associated with into a soft and resolute spiritual force through her paintings. This allows people to deeply recognize the hidden and subtle natural state of life that flows among all things.

Modern society has always induced people to indulge in the blind worship of certainty, solidity, and authority, treating arrogant and baseless values as the only truth, forgetting that truth always exists in ordinary, mundane and vulnerable states.  In order to reach the real world obscured by artificial systems, these artists have adopted a natural and equal perspective, and their sights penetrate the barriers of various stereotypes to return to the surface of the ordinary and real world. Under the meticulous gaze, ordinary people and things shine brightly. Their perspective sharply contrasts with the inertia and stereotypes of contemporary society.

Art creation is a social practice that awakens the natural body consciousness and integrates with the real world. In addition to enlightening our artistic senses, these works of art also have more important possibilities. That is to guide us to respect uncertainty, difference and vulnerability, to change our perspective, to look for a shared answer to the question of "how to live" and "how to coexist with the world" from the standpoint of the weak, the object and nature. Returning to the real world, awakening the neglected and obscured individual life, and combining various accidental factors in real life, a natural and harmonious state of life unfolds harmoniously in the hands of the artists.