Micro - Life

By Zhao Li

Life includes all activities and experiences needed for people’s survival and development. In a narrow sense, it refers to all necessary means of livelihood by which human keeps life and family. In a general sense, it means human’s activities and experiences including career life, personal life, family life and social life. But as for life itself, any concept is meaningless, since life is always individual, specific and detailed, which makes life itself complex and varied.

Someone says that the significance of life lies on profound experience accumulated from details of life and quality of routine life. Others say that the value of life is realized by continuous creation and pursuit for optimistic and meaningful life style based on deep experience. No matter how different people think about it, the truth is that all art makings are closely related with life, and even artist’s life is involved in the art.

Art is combined and intertwined with life itself. The comments from historic, aesthetic and cultural views have become colorful narratives and the narratives of narrative. However, what artists want to do is never the repeat of these narratives or the narratives of narrative. The goal of art is to break through such complicated relations and concealed intention for creating a new relation between art-making and life in a special narrative way.  

Facing gigantic changes in modern life, it is believed that no one can handle with ease. The hard thing, on the one side, is the astonishing changes of life beyond imagination; and on the other side, the unexpected details of deepened changes. What’s more, the uncertainty of changes makes people lost in the future prediction. This is what makes life fun, because people’s life has never a “planned schema”. Pursuit of change is just the principle of art-making.

As for the great changes of modern life, grand narrative can’t be a good approach for artist. The tiny slice could probably unveil the mystery for a clear fact. Micro-life, a new cultural concept born with changes of modern life, is an innovative life style on the platform of web constructed in the open social environment. It focuses on awareness of self-experience and share of self-value. Micro-life has a significant effect on art-making, resulting in active involvement in new trend of modern cultural life as well as sharing with the public about artist’s daily experience. This is the original idea to make this exhibition titled “Micro-life”.

Among the artists of exhibition, Xiao Yu and Yang Maoyuan are the representatives of modern artists born in 1960s; Shi Guowei, Xiang Yang and Zhang Jiebai share the same experience of abroad art career; Chen Jiao, Li Chao, Shang Yixin, Zhong Jinpei and Zhao Yiqian represent the emerging young artists. With the exhibition theme of “Micro-life” and special exhibition space of Soka Art Center, their works concentrate on display of personal view and latest art works concerning the relationship and meaning of art and life, as well as the response to the context of “Micro-life” with new constructive approaches.

The exhibition has neither predetermined result, nor unified expressive pattern just like the inspiration of modern life. Meanwhile, the openness of exhibition is witnessed on the free choice of media of art works and the expectation to visitor’s active participation.