Magician Space is pleased to present “Already I Know the Storms” in its newly renovated and expanded exhibition space. It is Jiang Zhi’s first show since the gallery announced its official representation of the artist, as well as his third solo exhibition at the gallery.
The title “Already I Know the Storms” comes from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Premonition”. For Jiang Zhi, “premonition” is also the primary motive catalyzing his art practices. Before arrival of the storms, the once traceless quotidian is intentionally suppressed. Storms come from the sea, from the chimneys, from the doors and windows. I recognize, then throw myself off; I am alone, yet the loneliness is the immense storm. The door is left unlatched, the chimneys undisturbed, “the windows do not yet tremble, and the dust is still heavy and dark”. To be continued, about a blank space, a marked character, the floating and sinking pages, the mighty waters, the unengaged images and sounds.
Alike his own contemplation, always sprung from the inner, Jiang Zhi’s art is marked by arrest and suspension in-between the rising and the falling power. This also matches what the subject in “Premonition” feels before the storms’ nearing — a heaviness and stillness from the inside out. What comes almost simultaneously with the sense of “restless” is a process of thawing, carried by the moment, and the two successively envelop the subject. Movements of sensations formed by life and temporal-spatial experience advance like waves, yet the self-consciousness, pushed to the wave crest, is the artist’s biggest rival. For Jiang Zhi, the“real” is not reachable, and the “is” is not verifiable, however, they both are inescapable challenges on the road to retrieve the “true”, and together constitute an enforced and restrictive mechanism of perception. Jiang Zhi clearly understands that perceptions and thinkings, though inevitable and necessary, are simply manifestations of restrictions. The magic of erasing one’s self from a deep consciousness of self incessantly attracts the artist to pursue after. In this exhibition, Jiang Zhi strides a more charged step to embrace the non-self, of growing momentum.
This is a muffled set, resounds with thundering noise of the imminent storms, deafening the benighted.
About the artist
Jiang Zhi (b.1971, Yuanjiang City, Hunan Province) is a Beijing-based artist who graduated from the China Academy of Art in 1995. After participating in the 'Post-Sense Sensibility' exhibitions in the 1990s, Jiang Zhi has subsequently proceeded to become one of the most influential Chinese artists of his generation. He works with a wide range of mediums that span video, painting, photography, installation, poetry and writing novels. He was awarded the academic achievement of Reshaping History (Chinart from 2000-2009) in 2010, the Asian New Force IFVA Critics Award in 2002, and was also awarded the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) in 2000.
Major solo exhibitions include: Already I Know the Storms, Magician Space, Beijing, CN (2018); Going and Coming, Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, CN (2018); To Make With Changes, HDM Gallery, Beijing, CN (2017); One is All, All is One, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, CN (2017); Predestiny, Magician Space, Beijing, CN (2016); The Sight, White Cube, Hong Kong, CN (2015); Strait is the Gate, Magician Space, Beijing, CN (2012); If This is a Man, Times Museum, Guangzhou, CN (2012); A Thought Arises, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, CN (2011).
Selections of important recent group exhibiiton include: On Paper 2, White Space, Beijing, CN (2018); Fiction Art, OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen, CN (2018); Wonderful World, Times Art Museum, Beijing, CN (2018); Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture "City Grow Difference", Shenzhen, CN (2017); Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, US (2017); The Exhibition of Annual Contemporary Art of China, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, CN (2017); That Has Been, and May Be Again, Para Site, Hong Kong (2016).
About the exhibition
Dates: Jul. 21 - Sept. 8, 2018
Venue: Magician Space
Courtesy of the artist and Magician Space.
