A Room that Releases Spores

The show « A Room that Releases Spores » is opening this Friday. This is my second time being a curator. It feels so great to be suported by all the artists! Location is at THE SHOUTER, 62 West Fuxing rd., Shanghai.

The mixed media exhibition A Room that Releases Spores is closely tied to nature and body. This exhibition brings together artists and labels 214, Doreen Chan, Liu Yi, Hao Jingfang & Wang Lingjie, Wang Xu, Xiao Xing, wei, E. T. and WV Sorcerer Productions, with works including painting, photography, sculpture, video, text, and music. These artworks will “occupy” the exhibition hall that once functioned as a private living room, and together, as spiritual and corporeal extensions, they fictionally depict an absent host of the space.

In an increasingly mechanized present world with pervasive cognitive divide, this exhibition attempts to discuss how to form new connections through the thread of spores. Compared to seeds, the growing stages of spores are much more primitive and independent, and therefore make them more persistent. This draws the analogy to the living state of many artists. A Room that Releases Spores doesn’t focus on any specific image of the world, rather it pays attention to the individual experiences of the artists, and the natural resonances among the works, the viewers, and this historical building, The Cloister, when they are situated in the same space.

The life of spores is a magical journey. From tiny particles clung to the surface of plants or fungi, they experience multiple transformations before eventually becoming complete and complex organisms. The same underlies the works in this exhibition. One leap, one rolling down, one eruption and one mutation, these works depict the human individuals situated within the vast social landscape. And precisely in these slight moments of happenings, the spores of consciousness are gradually collecting, and forming various new, tiny, yet continuously thriving paths. Lingering in midair, they gather every person who steps into this room.