Persistent Transients

Qimu Space has planned a group exhibition of young artists "Persistent Transients" from February 22nd to April 9th, featuring artists Fu Mingxi, Huang Lan, Liu Yemei, Ning Youqiong, Zhao Zeliang and Zhang Yinliang. The initial idea of this exhibition stems from the consideration of emotion, one of the driving forces of artists' creations, as a response to the perception of things by living beings and as an expression of the will to live. The artists' concern for subjectivity makes emotion a clue and an object of creative reproduction in contemporary art works - emotion is also integrated into the creative process and is inextricably intertwined with the final expression of the works, and the two are intertwined and mutually exist.

The title of the exhibition is drawn from two opposing perspectives in the study of emotions: the universalism of the life sciences and the social constructivism of anthropology. The terms "persistent" and "transient" correspond to the division of emotions based on "persistent (animal) and transient (cultural)" as discussed by Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, respectively. The division of emotions is based on "persistent (animal) and ephemeral (cultural)". By juxtaposing the seemingly opposing "persistent" and " transient", the title of the exhibition implies an exploration of the co-temporal relationship between continuity and discontinuity, between the continuous and the momentary, as the idea is constantly in flux of condensation and dissolution, while also pointing to the complexity and diversity of the artists' approaches in dealing with such abstract subject matter.

The paintings of Zhang Yinliang and Fu Mingxi both use urban space as a creative context, but the two artists capture the continuous changes of cultural scenes in different ways and show their interpretation of the relationship between the individual and the environment through their unique painting techniques. In both of Liu Yemei's and Ning Youqiong’s paintings, personal emotions are expressed in abstract and expressive forms. The former focuses on the construction of personal visual experience and the exploration of painting forms, while the latter reveals the contradictory emotional states of daily life through metaphorical means. However, in the works of Huang Lan, also a female, the emotions are more subtle and restrained, and the images convey a subtle emotional tension. The installation work "Iron Grass - Golden hour" by artist Zhao Zeliang in the exhibition uses "iron grass" made of clock hands to transform time into a state that cannot be detached, thus presenting the complex relationship between life and time.