In the last decade of the 20th century, the world underwent radical changes: the wave of the Internet swept across the globe, the rapid iteration of intelligent technology, and the reformation of political and economic structures led to the development of a multipolar world. The constant renewal and change of the world landscape influenced how people work, live and think. Moreover, the post-90s generation who was born during this period also grew up in this rapidly changing world and became the focus of the spotlight.

As the generation that witnessed the leap, the post-90s has long been used to jumping between reality and virtual. The memory of the time is like a broken thread in a spider’s web, drifting in the air, uncatchable and unbindable. The past is filtered with a layer of vintage dark yellow film and is cut into pieces of the puzzle, existing in a distant and unreachable history. Back to the present, we are accustomed to wandering in the virtual world, always trying to find solace in the pieces of code, and constantly staring at the ghostly glowing electronic screen at night, longingly. As the writer and poet Raymond Carver wrote in one of his short poems Winter Insomnia, "The mind can't sleep, can only lie awake and gorge, listening to the snow gather as for some final assault.”

The exhibition, titled Winter Insomnia, invited six post-90s artists to showcase their artistic creations in recent years. The exhibition consists of three themes: Traces of Memory and the World of Simulacrum, Self, Metaphor, Affection, and The Gazer’s Law of Degree Zero, expressing artist’s introspection from different perspectives in the unique background characteristic and the turbulent environment of times. Focus on self-expression in the era of impetuous, artists demonstrate their observation, understanding, and feedback of the real world.

Traces of Memory and the World of Simulacrum 

The wave of the Internet swept through historical memories with numerous digital images, and the rapid development of media technology brought dependence and restrictions on the perception of reality, how can people continue to explore the boundary between the virtual world and real life in this revolutionary digital era? Zhao Yu captures the ambiguity between "image" and "symbol" to reconstruct and reshape the interdependent relationship. He interweaves sculpture, collage and paintings into his concern and discussion of publicness and historicity, recounting his unique traces of memory; Starting from the interaction between “reality” and “fiction”, Liu Zhicheng focuses on virtual analysis and abstraction of real images. By putting the concept of space into his paintings, he breaks through the shackles of layers of rule and order, construing a innovative and distinctive simulacrum world.

Self, Metaphor, Affection 

Artistic creation is the externalization of the inner monologue, and the work being produced is the real-life expression of artist’s emotions and thoughts. Between reality and the emptiness of the artistic language, the image is framed by the interpretation and exploration of the inner-self. Zhan Ji'ang integrates his classical temperament with the modern time spirit, inspiring, creating, and expressing through artistic practice. His works express the soft and subtle oriental aesthetics “poetically”, dissolute the impetuous desires, and complete the exploration of his mind and life; Wang Xindi combines objects make up sense of strangeness by moving them into different compositions, and between figuration and abstraction. Ribbons, plants, and excrescences, her work explores the accuracy of image generation, searches for the uniqueness of visual expression, and conveys the personal emotions in deconstruction and reconstruction of order and rhythm. 

The Gazer’s Law of Degree Zero 

The creation of space is an invitation to viewing, and the presence of viewing allows things in the space to collide and correlate with each other. Canvas is the perfect place to experiment with the law of Degree Zero, in which things can abandon the inherent definition of the real world, allowing the viewer to observe the essence of things and the natural order behind them in the most primitive and reductive way. Yu Feier focuses on depicting seemingly unrelated imagery, creating a sense of subtle “ritual” through recombination and exploring the deep secrets behind the clues that linked the images; Starting from the boundaries of things, Ren Yichun observes the changes of light and dark between objects, to complete the sort of order and overall presence between them through transcendental intuition.