Exhibition SiteNo one is carefree, unless you inspire the soaring power from cultural and historical memories, or even biological instincts. With the bright texture and concave touch of oil painting, Xunyi allows the phoenix to release its wings that combine grain ear style and sharp weapon style again. Such a new angel is meant to make the suppressed and declining soul of the times transparent and uplifted. Xunyi is the Harry Potter of the painting world, who intends to harness the power of demons for his own use: the demons of Liaozhai, the demon lord combining skeletons and machines, and so on. With a tornado like minimalist style, he establishes a new demon lineage or a museum of strange worlds, seemingly to provide a new talisman for this era that has lost its protection, which can tame or suppress the beasts and demons in the unconscious mind—— Excerpt from curator Xia Kejun's "You Are Free and Easy"
Exhibition SiteThe Common Art Center cordially invites you to attend the solo exhibition of "You Xiaoyao" artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai) at 16:00 on December 15, 2024. The exhibition is curated by Xia Kejun and showcases the works of artist Xunyi (Yang Kai). Xunyi (Yang Kai)'s paintings blend the humor of youth and the sadness of memory with philosophical depth. Art is nothing more than giving struggling memories a light form. Therefore, he created a new series of blue banana trees and rain hitting banana trees, where the breathing and color tones of branches and leaves reflect the convergence and softening of phoenix wings. Everything is just the poetic expression of ghost love. The exhibition will continue until January 11, 2025.
「In Unfettered Realm」Review of the Opening Ceremony
Curator Xia Kejun
Thank you for your attendance and support. At this moment, we are Yang Kai, now renamed as Xunyi, and holding an important renaming ceremony. Next, we will start with the core work of this exhibition - Demon Lord 2, which is located in the center of the exhibition and was created by Xun 18 years ago. Xunyi graduated with a bachelor's degree from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and a master's degree from Central Academy of Fine Arts. As early as eight years ago, he held a personal exhibition at Today Art Museum. This exhibition is actually a retrospective of his artistic creations over the past decade. I chose to start from Lord 2 because it marks a leap in my imagination. Xunyi's works are highly distinctive and easy to identify, resembling a phoenix spreading its wings. Their inspiration comes from Chu culture and the Hunan region.
As an artist born in the 1980s, his creative style is unique. He combines the illusory silhouette with simplified, heavily painted bones or skeletons in front of him, fully displaying organic and inorganic objects through the posture of spreading wings. This not only integrates the traditional Chinese culture of flying figures, but also incorporates elements of modern mechanical angels, forming a multi-layered image overlay. As early as fifteen years ago, Xunyi found his own way of expression. His works are full of vitality and can simultaneously express the themes of life and death. Xunyi's works give people a sense of wonder, showing strong vitality and bold personality, while also being delicate. In addition, his works also reveal the depth unique to young people, which is reflected in his naming and expressive power. Next, I will briefly introduce this exhibition and thank everyone for adopting this approach of semi guided tours and semi interviews to appreciate the representative works of Xun Yi and listen to his creative ideas together.
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Artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai) 
Hello everyone, I am Xunyi, my real name is Yang Kai, and my stage name is Xunyi. I am hosting this exhibition and warmly welcome everyone to come. First of all, thank you to the Joint Art Center, thank you to Teacher Xia Kejun, thank you to Ms. Tian Ling, thank you to Ms. Bao Yu, thank you to Mr. Wen Zhihua, and thank you all very much for coming. Next, I will briefly share some of my creative ideas with you. My artistic journey truly began with my first solo exhibition, called 'Touching Extreme', which marked the starting point of my artistic exploration. Although the exploration stage before 'Touching the Pole' was also important during my student years, the 'Touching the Pole' exhibition marked the beginning of my formal entry into the art world and my emergence in academia. The painting titled 'Genesis' in this exhibition is not only the cover of the exhibition, but also one of the most central works in this series. It records the important creative concepts of my time and holds great significance for me. When creating this painting, I mainly based my thinking on the following points: Firstly, I long to find my unique style in artistic creation, hoping that my work can be different from others. This requires me to innovate in artistic language and distinguish myself from others' works.
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Secondly, I chose the theme of "Genesis" to delve into because Michelangelo's eponymous work had a profound impact on me. I am not simply imitating or replicating his classic composition, but rather hoping to reinterpret this theme in a contemporary context. It has been about 600 years since Michelangelo's' Genesis', and I have attempted to incorporate contemporary elements and perspectives into this work, creating a collision and fusion between classic and contemporary. At the age of only 23, I carried the passion and rebellion of youth, yearning to overthrow the existing artistic framework and rebuild my own artistic world. Therefore, for me, 'Genesis' is not only a choice of theme, but also a spiritual symbol representing the courage and determination to overthrow, rebuild, and start anew.
Curator Xia Kejun
The name of this exhibition is' You Are Free '. Its naming inspiration comes from Zhuangzi's "Xiaoyao You", especially the image of fish turning into birds. Genesis is also the beginning of a world, and "Genesis" symbolizes the beginning of the world, that is, the moment of creation. In fact, it combines the unique vitality, youthful vigor, and soaring atmosphere of Eastern culture with the illustrations of art history, and integrates the profound concept of a new beginning of life. The combination of these three elements constitutes the unique core concept of the exhibition.
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My painting language needs to be analyzed from several perspectives. Firstly, it is neither expressionism nor abstraction, nor concreteness. Instead, it aims to find a new language within the narrow gap between them. And it also draws some elements from traditional Chinese painting, such as large areas of blank space in the picture, but it also has some super thick expressionist mechanisms, and it is like primitive graffiti. This language is situated in a narrow gap between concreteness and abstraction, which I call 'painting by smudging'. This is a new way of language in the contemporary Chinese context, and it is also a research achievement of mine in earlier years.
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Curator Xia Kejun
When we touch the thickness of the artwork and the pigment, due to the texture of the pigment and the texture on the plane, it has a strong tactile sensation, with a convex and concave texture. It is not only a touch of two hands, but also a touch of thickness. Here, I would like to ask Xunyi, how do you want to paint this phoenix?
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Artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai)
Most of my early paintings explored fundamental issues of human nature. Life and death, separation and loss, sex and love are all fundamental issues of human nature. Taking the phoenix as an example, what I want to express is the profound connotation of life and death interdependence. At the level of expression, I am faced with a huge challenge, which is how to interpret traditional themes like phoenixes and dragons from a contemporary perspective. These themes are often seen as "clich é s" that are difficult to innovate, either painted in traditional classic images or difficult to incorporate contemporary elements. However, I am always seeking breakthroughs and striving to create a contemporary phoenix image. My phoenix works, including those I have painted before, showcase a unique contemporary style. This breakthrough is mainly reflected in the design, which gives the phoenix a sharp mechanical feel, completely different from the traditional wings and feathers of the phoenix. More importantly, this change is not only formal, but also contextual. Viewers can feel at a glance that these works are no longer traditional paintings, but rather contemporary artworks full of atmosphere.
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Curator Xia Kejun
Let's continue to look at the work 'Entanglement', which is the representative work of Xunyi in 2016. After re examining the works of Xunyi after the epidemic, we may be able to deeply appreciate the emotional power contained within them. The epidemic has made us re-examine life and crave insight into the essence of life. A small virus can shake the world and completely change the trajectory of human life, forcing us to coexist and fight against this invisible virus that transforms from non living to living forms. More than a decade ago, Xunyi keenly captured the essence of life and presented it through his works. He ingeniously incorporates insects, machines, microorganisms, and another form of life into his paintings, using Chinese style graffiti techniques and expressive, tornado like brushstrokes to create a kind of noise and agitation originating from living organisms. At the same time, he cleverly used sculptural texture to create a sense of contrast between reality and virtuality - the entity of bones and skeletons intertwined with the shadow behind them, creating a profound dialogue between virtuality and reality, weakness and strength, tangibility and intangibility, motion and stillness, life and death.
Artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai)
This painting expresses a conflicted state of existence in the present moment of life. On the other hand, when I created it, I was conflicted and expressed it naturally and sincerely. At the same time, the works of "Entanglement" and "Strange Tales from Liaozhai - Painting Wall 1" can be discussed together, touching on some traditional Chinese culture. In the early days, I started with the language of painting, hoping to have a different appearance from others. In my early years, I pursued a "good" work that satisfied four aspects at the same time: 1. a new language of painting, 2. exquisite techniques (not referring to realistic techniques, but to personal skills, commonly known as having two brushes), 3. profound and touching meanings and ideas, including concepts, and 4. based on the commonalities of human nature. I think there are still a few points in this that I did quite well. But as I grew older and my cognition increased, I realized that it was not that simple. These were just the basic requirements of painting, which were based on low dimensional cognition and also prone to linear objectification of artistic expression. So it is important to see and understand the changes in the dimensions of the world, which determine the "height" of your work.
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Curator Xia Kejun
The space of the Common Art Center is very large, and we have carefully arranged multiple exhibition halls. In the small works area here, there are some interesting works displayed, including a brand new series, especially the one called "Flash Kill Van Gogh", which fully showcases the unique creativity and extraordinary talent of Xunyi in his youth. These small works not only showcase Xunyi's artistic style, but also convey his profound perception and keen insight into the times, society, and emotions through their titles and content. This unique ability to control and express oneself is a prominent feature of Xunyi's artistic creation.
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Artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai)
The blue banana and rain soaked banana, as well as the flash sale of Van Gogh, these landscape series, originated from some banana trees that I saw every day next to my studio when I was creating in the south in my early years, have a certain relationship. After I left the south and came to Beijing, when I tried to make this series again, I felt that it was the declining youth time in my memory. This exhibition showcased four types of my works: firstly, my oil painting creations. The second is the oil painting landscape series (one is a blue banana with black background and blue leaves, resembling a flower but not a flower, it is like a blue rose, actually a banana at night. The other is a rain soaked banana with white background and green leaves, which is a resilient, fearless and upward vitality). The third is the series of paper-based works, which is a way of recording the state of life, just like a shorthand diary. I use this method to record every day the things and objects around me that I see. It is also the precursor manuscript of my creative works. The fourth is my experimental art, which includes installations, video installations, performance art, etc., such as the comprehensive performance art work "Laughing Proudly in the Jianghu" exhibited this time.
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Curator Xia Kejun
Let's talk about this blue artwork. It is very delicate, and in fact, it is a very unique piece among the exhibited works. It is called 'Time Boils Rain 3: Between Two Deaths', a very philosophical name.
Exhibition Site
Artist Xun Yi (Yang Kai)
As the name suggests, this artwork depicts the critical point between two types of death. We can see two types of images (one is a little girl wearing a red dress and a crown, holding a balloon and soaring in the blue sky and white jade, and the other is an artificially aborted life that has not yet taken shape). The red main body of the screen is a female reproductive organ, surrounded by eggs and fertilized eggs from the ovaries. We use this extracted totemic image to express the absurdity of youth and the idea of time boiling rain. If you were at this critical point, thinking about life and death, how would you choose? At the same time, it is also a criticism of the rampant, irresponsible, and morally lacking love in contemporary society. Finally, in fact, art itself is not the most important thing, and art is not important to me either. What is important is a relationship and understanding between people, the universe, and all things in this world. The essence of art is to challenge the visual boundaries of human desire to understand the essence of the universe through the pursuit of the unknown.
Curator: Xia Kejun
Doctor of Philosophy, professor and doctoral supervisor of School of Arts, Renmin University of China. Activate the core concepts of "virtual surplus" and "uselessness" in China, and transform them into contemporary ones. Published more than ten personal philosophical and artistic works, planned over three hundred art exhibitions, and made contributions to the study of Eastern and Western philosophy and contemporary art. Won the "2023 European Poetry and Literature Homer Award". Recent representative works include: "A Waiting and Useless Nation," "Useless Literature - Kafka and China," "Useless Theology - Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida," "Smoke Shadow and Veil," and "Letting Go of the Weird: The New Beginning of World Philosophy.
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