2023.8.16-10.15

Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning

Curator: Yongwoo Lee

Foreword

Following the trend of "Eastward Expansion of Western Influence," various Western artistic movements entered China during the 20^th century. In this process of cultural exchange, abstract art emerged within the context of China's predominant tradition of realism. It wasn't until the 1980s that abstract art flourished in China, and Ding Yi stands as one of the representative artists of this period. His unique visual language, symbolized by the cross signs (“+” and “x”), has had a profound impact on the development of contemporary Chinese art. Guided by a distinctive conceptual perspective, Ding Yi's creative journey has navigated through three stages: “steadying,” “overlooking,” and “looking up.” Divorced from literal content, his works have gradually delved into the interwoven layers of time, urbanization, nature, manmade structures, and ultimately the human spirit. Ding Yi's artworks avoid familiar objective realities, refusing to immediately align with personal experience. This creates a pause, a blank moment that highlights the artist's distinct and pure artistic concepts. Through its non-representational and non-objective traits, Ding Yi’s art breaks away from mere depictions of the real world, discarding narrative functions in favor of reproducing rational truth. Ding Yi's career spans the eras of China's Reform and Opening Up to the present day. The evolution of his works, artistic concepts, and styles – systematically organized and showcased in this exhibition – unquestionably hold intrinsic value for shaping the direction of contemporary art in Shenzhen, a young city similarly born from China's Reform and Opening Up. Undeniably, the development of abstract art in China continues to progress amidst debates, seeking novel transformations within the contemporary art scene of China's New Era. As a front-line city in China's Reform and Opening Up, a pioneering city that has experienced over 40 years of development alongside the Chinese contemporary art scene, Shenzhen has propelled itself into an international metropolis, riding a wave of fast-paced economic growth. Founded on a pursuit of the vanguard coupled with an inclusive humanistic attitude, Shenzhen’s rich environment of urban economics, science and technology, and other industries can allow art to cultivate its own phenomena and context for the continuation of abstraction. In the exploration of how to integrate the ever-changing reality of contemporary abstract art, the city will develop its own voice that engages in dialogue with international artistic languages. Looking back at the development of Western abstract art, creative endeavors founded upon reason have been nurtured by large-scale metropolises. When Cross Galaxyencounters Shenzhen, we hope to ignite new sparks. Our goal is to present existence by connecting constellations built upon shared human emotions and universal truths, surpassing the societal norms based on reason, transcending into a star system.

Yan Weixin

Director of Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning

Ding Yi’s Cross Galaxy

Ding Yi is well known as a geometric abstract artist who uses the character “+” and grids. The symbols ‘+’ and ‘x’ that he has been using in painting have been set as a form of expression that integrates design and painting. The symbols, reminiscent of mathematical formulas, have become an aesthetic label for Ding Yi’s art over the past 30 years. The reason why Ding Yi employed signs familiar to the public as a medium of expression for painting is that he believes that the symbolism of these signs themselves is much less than that of other materials. And thus, the works produced contain anti-aesthetic intentions to make the audience see "art that is not art-like." In other words, it is to prevent the revolution of identity in which ordinary objects or materials are transformed into completely different objects of worship by the aesthetic baptism injected by the artist. His abstract art was born in 1988, the spiritual and practical dawn of Chinese contemporary art. The 1980s of Chinese contemporary art was a huge laboratory in which all kinds of avant-garde and experimental art forms emerged, riding the wave of reform and opening-up policies after the Cultural Revolution. Witnessing a break with the past and a subversion of values in which newness itself is considered a virtue, Ding Yi distanced himself from the frenzy. He began to search for trivial things that are small, humble, insignificant, and difficult to be regarded as art materials. He found the symbols “x” and “+”, which are familiar to the public but do not carry specific meaning. These symbols can be seen as a rejection of the expression of value-centeredness and the conventions that claim it. In other words, it is a meaningless alternative to the age of meaning. Over the past 30 years, his cross aesthetics have sometimes appeared as social signs that allow us to read the progress of history, and as a medium of color and form expressing China's modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. Ding Yi's continuing interest in art lies in emphasizing pictoriality rather than the spiritual message or mental sensibility that most abstract paintings imply. The hand-painted symbols cover the entire surface of the large canvas, requiring great precision and skill. The amount of artistic labor is doubled by that much, and since changes in the concept and theme may occur in the process, no one can assist in the painterly work. His paintings intentionally avoid establishing a center. Each corner of the canvas becomes the center. In abstract paintings as well as realistic paintings, the audience's eye is drawn to the center of the painting according to the concentration of images, colors, and illumination that the artist intends. However, Ding Yi's painting intentionally distracts the viewer's habitual orientation to the center or desire to find the center. Instead, it makes the audience find visual elements of interest while studying the canvas. Therefore, the composition does not lead to a center but reifies the periphery, allowing the audience to find their own viewpoints. This is the reason why audiences stay in the exhibition for a relatively long time. The pictorial liberation provided by Ding Yi's painting and the message that guarantees and induces the viewer's selective freedom seem to read the artist's message, "Do not look for the meaning of the painting, but rather look, feel, and contemplate for yourself." In this sense, Ding Yi’s art is a very social and political message embodying equality. Ding Yi's solo exhibition held at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning is like a kind of autobiography that shows the entire process of Ding Yi's art over the past 35 years, from its beginnings to the present. Beyond the tableau of "densely patterned paintings", the exhibition showcases a big change in his work in which the beauty of negative space gradually emerges. In particular, a fan suspended in the air made in the shape of a “+” is introduced, expanding the three-dimensional expression of “x” that he showed in his past sculptures and installation works. It is very rare that the strong signs acquired in youth completely walked with an artist throughout the lifetime practice. Ding Yi's art, which started from the cross sign, is thus a cross galaxy and an epic where life breathes.

Yongwoo Lee

Curator, Professor of Tongji University

Chapter One: Meaning and Meaninglessness

Ding Yi’s art requires a revision of human habitual thinking. In the mid-1980s, when many artists were struggling between the influence of Western contemporary art and the traditional values of Chinese culture, he began to develop his own artistic language using “x” and “+”, which looked like the symbols for design. His idea was to essentially reexamine the meaning of art through small, insignificant, and meaningless things. In other words, it was to create a “painting that is unlike painting.” In the process of repeatedly painting “x” on canvas, paper, fabrics, wood panels, Ding Yi witnessed a completely different meaning and change produced by them. These changes in expression generated by simple and anonymous symbols served as a vessel that contained social phenomena of the era, such as modernization, industrialization, and metropolitanization. In the meantime, the sign of Cross and its variants have become landmark labels that testified and defined Ding Yi’s 35-year history of abstract art and its aesthetic meaning.

Chapter Two: Dwelling and Drifting

Ding Yi’s work leads the audience into a narrative hidden behind abstract forms. The city-themed paintings, which began in the late 1990s, depict cities, civilizations, and the people living in them in various ways. The paintings of the era when urban regeneration was not actively carried out are dark and flat. Urban landscapes regenerated through industrialization and urbanization created an urban epic with bright fluorescent colors, neon signs on the streets, and glary edifices arranged in an orderly manner. The city-themed paintings make Shanghai, where he was born and lives, and other cities in the world look like a romantic stage where melodies of colors dance, and sometimes like sentimental dramas accompanied by consumption and desire. His dynamic paintings are full of life, and the grids he created in the 1980s undoubtedly walk with Ding Yi as a medium to deliver his messages. The emotions and melancholy flowing exquisitely in his paintings further enrich the fluidity of color in his works.

Chapter Three: Figurative Abstraction

“x” and “+”are concrete signs, but they are multiplied to create an abstract image. And in the form of abstraction, sometimes Ding Yi’s works lead people to associate with particular images and scenes. Ding Yi does not paint figurative objects, and as a method of working, he makes no detailed drafts in advance. All he has is just a framework in mind -- like a roughly planned journey with several spots for lingering pinpointed, but leaving the routes and means of arrival unset. Very often he works from several directions alternately, forming an image that has multiple centers or no center. There is no definite or authoritative interpretation of his work. On the contrary, he encourages the audience to view and experience themselves. Whether it is reasonable speculation or wild imagination, their involvement in the subjective reading of works is doomed to bring new life to Ding Yi’s work.

Chapter Four: Living Beings

Living Being is a name shared by all the entities that have life. Each single “x” and “B” can be seen as an individual, while the collection of these individuals forms a massive network of “cross galaxy”. In his recent works, Ding Yi developed further the notion of humanism. One of the prompts was his pilgrim to Mount Everest in 2021. Being immersed in the tranquil and enormous vibe of Tibet the twilight, he started to see the heaven and the earth with new eyes. As a result, an unprecedented distinctive division appeared in the new works, which implies the nature of relativity like the heaven and the earth that prevails in all the living beings. Crosses and stars that appear in the paintings serve as mediators crossing the image. It looks like they broke the rigid boundaries of the grids, and built new connections. About Yongwoo Lee Yongwoo Lee is the professor of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University. He is the founder and artistic director of the Shanghai Project. He was the founding artistic director of the Gwangju Biennale and the president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. He served as the director of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum and president of the International Biennial Association. He was a professor at the Shanghai University, Korea University, and a distinguished professor at the Tokyo University of Arts, among others. Lee curated numerous exhibitions including Times Reimagined (Palazzo Contarini Polignac, collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale), Dansaekhwa (collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale), Nam June Paik Retrospective (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea), Whitney Biennial Seoul (MMCA, Seoul), 2116 and Seeds of Time, Shanghai Project 1st and 2nd Phase (Shanghai Himalayas Museum and various locations around Shanghai), Electronic Maples (New York Center for Media Art), The Challenging Souls: Yves Klein, Lee Ufan, Ding Yi (PSA, Shanghai), The Art Life of Huang Rui (Jupiter Museum of Art, Shenzhen), etc. He authored books such as Information and Reality, Nam June Paik, Dansaekhwa, On Video Art. About Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning (“SZ MoCAUP”) is the iconic cultural project led by the Shenzhen Municipality. Sitting at the center of the Futian District, Shenzhen, SZ MoCAUP plays an important role in the communication, inheritance, and development of contemporary art and urban culture of Shenzhen. Undertaking the mission of participating in the contemporary cultural and art development with a global vision and enabling art engagement in the city via a diverse, cross-disciplinary approach, SZ MoCAUP adopts the innovative model of “Art +” to create an open, globalized platform for contemporary cultural and art exchanges and to explore infinite possibilities of art together with the public. While fulfilling the collective vision, the two components of Shenzhen MoCAUP also hold different emphases. The Museum of Contemporary Art, as the bridge for domestic and international contemporary art dialogues, is dedicated to bringing international presentations of contemporary art to China and displaying the evolution of China’s contemporary art community to the world. The other half of the complex, the Museum of Urban Planning, serves as the window showcasing and linking the past, the present, and the future of Shenzhen’s urban development and provides a platform for academic discussion of urban planning and architectural design research.

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