A Thousand Plateaus Art Space is pleased to announce our participation in the 2024 NAFI Nanjing International Art Fair, where we will be presenting the works of artist Chen Xiaoyi from November 21st to November 24th at the Nanjing International Exhibition Center, Booth No. A-10.
In Chen Xiaoyi’s artistic practice, she endeavors to offer a perspective that transcends the visible material world, probing the underlying principles and forces that shape our reality and experiences. This exploration engages with profound considerations of time, existence, and the intricate relationship between humanity and nature.
The works presented in this exhibition, ranging from Cloud Dictionary to The Visions of Karma , trace a thematic thread from her nearly decade-long artistic journey, pointing to a latent shaping force that resides beyond the human perspective. Through this, she seeks to delve into those dimensions of existence that fundamentally define us, yet resist articulation.
The visions of Karma
In recent years, artist Chen Xiaoyi has repeatedly ventured into the heart of the Hengduan Mountains in search of high mountain lakes. The indescribable essence of nature points to an original existence—not of this moment, not now, unable to be captured in language or named—a landscape that is continuous, complete, yet vanished.The images unfold a journey through intertwined realities and virtual spaces, guided by the ecological memory of the white conch, drawing closer to the narrative of Earth's life.
The entire film is composed of static photographs taken along the way. For her, photography is a language that transcends words, possessing the ability to summon things that have vanished but still exist. Within the dimensions of photographs, memories, and imagination, she uses the magic of the medium to redraw a vanished landscape, tracing a path through the vast and silent imagery, attempting to reveal and open up the enigmatic "world." Her work is dedicated to uncovering a broader vitality from ancient things, seeking to find the potential agency of existence from a perspective that transcends human time and space, resisting or structurally surpassing the world of today.
During Chen Xiaoyi's recent field studies, she repeatedly used satellite maps to locate and view both the marked coordinates and her own position. As a result, the mountains, rivers, forests, and paths before her, alongside the "locations" displayed on the map, introduced a visual "difference" in addition to their absolute accuracy. This led her to a new perception of the vast space's depth. Maps are derived from the most authentic and precise data, yet they are presented as abstract images composed of dots, lines, and planes. This may also reflect the experience evoked by all types of maps—extremely abstract yet highly precise. Therefore, "cross-section" corresponds to such abstract "maps," which exist as images of static landscapes. They represent concrete forms and the customary perspective of being within mountains and forests from a human scale.
Cloud Dictionary began with a scene described in War and Peace. Beyond the blood-soaked battlefield, there lies a vibrant and beautiful morning, where clouds and smoke swirl together, creating a stunning vision. Chen Xiaoyi, inspired by this, collected images of incidental major events (unrelated to human will) and shifted focus from the events themselves to the world beyond them. Natural disasters and natural tranquility sometimes merge in an unexpectedly harmonious way. Disasters often strike without warning, on an otherwise ordinary day. Where, then, do we draw the line between describing a natural phenomenon and a natural disaster? Between the accidental and the inevitable, how can we understand a spatiotemporal narrative that transcends the human perspective?
