4C Exhibition 2023 Q1 " The Zeitgeist" opened as scheduled on March 4, 2023. This exhibition has invited Aussi Chen, Yukai Chen, Hailing Liu, Zoe Congyu Liu, Xujun Han, Wenfeng Kang, Yan Yan, Yixuan Wu, Wei Wu/Zhenyu Yang, Chun Sun, Ryan Muchen Wang, Ruoyi Shi, Liying Zhang, Seri Ziyao Zou - 14 artists in total. Through various creative mediums such as painting, sculpture, multimedia video, installation, etc., they together interpret different aspects of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.

 

This exhibition continues the founding concept of 4C Gallery, driven by the idea of carrying the artists' concepts. The selected works fully reflect the connection between the individual artist and the times, which is embodied in both content and form, or expressed between technology and language. This is not only an expression of the current socio-cultural reality but also a transcendental, self-interpretation. The artists connect their inner world with many issues faced by modern society, which include everyday trivial matters, as well as macro topics such as gender issues, natural changes, and global situations.

 

The state of the times, in some sense, is a collective presentation of individual creative styles, which are reflected in the artist's past experiences, cognition, interests, and inspirations. As American art critic Rosalind Krauss wrote in Passages in Modern Sculpture, in the idea of the famous Soviet director Eisenstein, the basis of sculpture and all forms of art is the ideology they embody. And this ideology, unique to the individual, gives rise to different creative styles. The 18th-century naturalist Buffon once pointed out that "style is the man himself." For Hegel, style is "some of the characteristics of his personality that an individual artist fully reveals in terms of expression and nuances in brushwork." Here "personality" refers to the artist's individuality, which is forged into material means.

 

Individuality is the most distinct feature that differentiates artists, and the 14 artists in this exhibition also present 14 types of art pieces that are realistic, avant-garde, and conceptual. They showcase the life state of the diaspora Chinese community in their own unique ways. Yixuan Wu's installation work "Isle II" combines transparent irregular glass, fine sponges, and data lines covered in yellow material. By breaking, reorganizing, and grafting these items, she constructs a warm private space. In Liying Zhang's "Shelter" series of paintings, emotions and natural totems are combined, reflecting the outside world and the private world. The delicate lines flow like thoughts, forming images full of nature and innocence, like illustrations in fairy tale books. However, behind these beautiful images lie confusion, pain, and unease – the antidote to the spirit. Ziyao Zou and Xujun Han lead us to explore the connection between nature and spirit through landscape paintings with surrealistic and symbolic colors. The abstract paintings of Aussi Chen and Wenfeng Kang reflect another kind of spiritual state of individuals under real living conditions. Aussi Chen imitates electronic images, collages between different colors and different textures, and shows abundant imagination. Kang's works have more Eastern aesthetic colors, responding to all changes with constancy, finding calm in movement, and seeking connection and change in repetition.