Qi Mu Space is pleased to announce the opening of Zheng Lu’s Solo Exhibition “Closseum” on Feb. 2, 2024 that features a brand new site-specific art work.
Closseum can actually be taken as volume that is removed after Bolean computation. Neither the given cube itself nor its varied sphere-like structures have particular significance that reveals itself only when the spheres detach from the cube. The significance, in other words, lies in the varied planes formed following the detachment. The “cube” and the “sphere” represent respectively regularity and reaction to changes. In this sense, “Closseum” stands for “principled flexibility”.
“Closseum”, a “black-box” theatre here, turns the whole theatre into a stage for performance that is in interaction with the viewing space. There is no actor, as the spectators themselves are playing. In other words, one watches and gets watched simultaneously.
“Closseum” is a porthole. Fifty-five years ago, a human being took a look back at the earth from a new perspective. The astronaut on Apollo 8 looked out of the porthole and saw, in the remote distance, our blue celestial body rising in the wide expanse of the outer space. The same sensation recurs as one, standing in the center of the “Closseum”, looks out through “the earth’s eyes”. The structure, like a window or a guardian, connects with the exterior passage or defines the interior world like a bridge and a boundary imposer.
To each of us, “Closseum” is symbolic of the closseum inside and the exchange between the viewer and the viewed in a theatre of time.
About the artist:
Zheng Lu, born in Inner Mongolia in 1978, graduated from the Sculpture Department of Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 2003 and got an MA from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. In 2005 he won a LVMH Prize and joined in a training program at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He is now based in Beijing as an independent artist.
Centered mainly on sculpture and installation, Zheng Lu’s art also covers a variety of other media, ranging from graphic art to multimedia and to stage art and public art. His practice over the past several years has led him to a unique art logic and a system of expression that keep improving. Many a concept, among others, material and space, is incorporated in his own frame of art as part of his distinctive artistic language. His treatment of these concepts is also metaphoric of the diversity and possibility of life, as well as his view on how to put the universe, our nature, and ego in perspective.
Zheng’s works have been displayed at many important Chinese and overseas museums and galleries, including National Museum of China, Long Museum in Shanghai, Parkview in Beijing, Museum of Contemporary art in Taipei, Musée Maillol in Paris, Musée Océanographique de Monaco, Social Political Contemporary Art Museum, Jerusalem, National Contemporary museum of Mongolia, etc.
