Soka Art Center Beijing is pleased to present a group exhibition “Cold Encounter”, featuring the work of Ma Han, Na Buqi, Tian Tian, Tsai Yushan, Wu Yiqiang, Yu Aijun, Zhao Bo and Zhang Lin.  For this exhibition, eight artists will use “cold” as a theme to explore cool colors and media, extend painting concepts through a cold perspective, and create dynamic works of various dimensions.

Having originated in the West during the 70s, Conceptual Art was popularized in China in the 90s.  Even now, installation, performance, video, and multimedia art continue to gain momentum, becoming the most vital and influential forms of art media.  Yet, the practice of conceptual art, which emphasizes the thoughts behind an artwork instead of the physical work itself, has led to the demise of formalism in painting.  In the pursuit of eliminating “style,” “essence,” and “man-made qualities,” the instrumentalism and stylistic expressions of paintings have seemingly become the constraints on concepts and ideologies.  Even as traditional aesthetics fade from the focus of artistic expression, the genre of painting did not vanish as previously predicted.  Based on such a premise, this exhibition will use a cold perspective - tones of cool colors and viewpoints through a layer of cold glass - to re-examine the subjectivity of painting and the strength within its artistic language.  This resurrected form of painting sheds the reliance on a conventional medium or framework since its combination of nontraditional media with sculpture and installation art enables it to occupy two- and three-dimensional spaces simultaneously.  This gives rise to a new kind of visual experience.  In this exhibition, the artists use different creative approaches to construct art regarding a “cold” world.  Within this world, the artists, audience, artworks, and indistinct “concepts” all meet in a cold encounter.