AAIE is set to present "A Priori and Stars" from September 28 to October 30 at the Rome Space, featuring artworks by Gao Xintong, Burkhard von Harder, Lv Mei, Fan Zhen, Huang Zhu, Wang Chengdong, Laura Fortin, Zhang Haoye, and Emanuela Lena. Yaning Zhu curates this exhibition, some works that will be publicly displayed for the first time. The exhibition "A Priori and Stars" showcases the artists' reflections on innate cognition and the multifaceted nature of human existence. In his "Critique of Pure Reason," Immanuel Kant proposed that a priori knowledge forms the basis of our understanding of the world. Despite the wealth of information obtained through the senses, Kant believed proper knowledge and wisdom are based on specific pre-existing cognitive frameworks. Not acquired through experience, these frameworks are the "hardware" we use to organize and understand experience. We cannot perceive time and space directly through experience. Still, through these forms, we perceive and understand the events we experience, exploring how a priori intuition (knowledge preceding experience) manifests in human perception and interaction. Accordingly, this exhibition further presents how artists uncover hidden truths in their creative work.
Burkhard provides a series of photographic works that explore moments of solitude and reflection, evoking a profound understanding of the human condition through visual silence and isolation. His work often magnifies or alters the natural colors of subjects to produce vibrant and striking images. This treatment of color helps create a sense of drama and intensity in his photographs. He often closes in on his subjects, capturing fine details and textures that might be overlooked. This close-up approach, combined with his use of distortion and abstraction, lends depth and complexity to his images while also capturing the void that arises from a sincere and unwavering reflection on humanity's inherent, insurmountable "original sin," resisting all unfathomable depths of darkness through art.
Zhang Haoye's photographic works are shot on expired film, abandoning the requirement for accurate image information recording. Traditional photography, which demands precise focus and exposure, is transformed into blind, accidental shooting with unpredictable outcomes. The film's colours, each roll's reaction to colours, or rather, its sensitivity, present a variety of distinct expressions. His "Dream" series, created in 2013, conveys contemplation and tranquillity through minimalist and meditative artistic expression, reflecting his experiences and silent interactions with the surrounding environment.
Lv Mei's art is influenced by Taoist philosophy. She pursues the essence of "Tao," considering it the purest form of abstraction. In her work, forms return to the essence of matter, basic geometric shapes like circles and triangles, carrying infinite imagery and deep meaning with minimalistic force. She believes that simplicity can contain immense energy, and her works are direct visual mappings of her inner world, pictorial representations of the soul.
As an emerging young artist, Fan Zhen stuns the public with her unique painting skills and a powerful healing and life force. The colours she uses are the natural colours of the pigments, mixed directly on the canvas and then left to sun-dry, allowing time and nature to participate in her creative process. Fan Zhen's art represents her breakthrough in mental predicaments, an inner competition between cognitive activity and brain operation, and an inner game between awareness and knowledge. "Reading the heart through painting" is the most inherent implication in Fan Zhen's art.
Gao Xintong reconstructs and deconstructs visual elements through vibrant color combinations and subtle transparencies, presenting his worldview. His works often attempt to create illusions by manipulating people's perceptions of portraits. These abstract visuals, yet resembling faces upon viewing, draw heterogeneity from various possible forms, extracting an incredible image that transcends physical limits and merges with light and dynamics.
"Slices" is a professional term in medicine, referring to taking a specific size of diseased tissue and making a pathological slice for further examination under a microscope. The process of disease development is diagnosed pathologically, and pathological specimens are produced for clinical diagnosis. In this painting, the artist Wang Chengdong treats the conceptual Jiangnan as a whole organization, with each piece of work being a sliced specimen. It is an examination of the present with today's perspective, as well as history, and an examination of the present from a future perspective. The focus on creation is the result of the artist's long-term thought. It is not accidental; it is deliberate and well-considered. He wants to express his understanding of religion, philosophy, history, and humanistic sentiments. Painting and literature are not the same; painting has its indescribability, thus it also has infinite description and interpretation possibilities.
Laura Fortin's paintings feature women as subjects, studying concepts and aesthetics related to women and their relationship with the body and mind. The women she portrays are interpreters of tense emotions, appearing in narrow and lonely spaces, accompanied by a controlled sense of alienation. They are represented by objects and themes extracted from daily life, reaffirming their existence. Her paintings repair wounds and failures, serving as significant organisms capable of affecting internal transformations, which disrupt and attack to change the original female body, transforming them into primal wholes, like shrouds welcoming pain while retaining life's imprint, whether it's angry or burning red tossed onto the canvas like a mute's curse, with pale green and blue tearing and depleting, revealing absence and confusion.
Emanuela depicts wounds; she says, "The root of my experience is a wound. The wound is everything. It's the ashes of the world, a residual zone of debris. Painting, for me, is a reparative act. It is continually mending the wound. It is a dialogue with disaster in a continuous, secret, and futile organizing action. This urgency gives rise to tensions."
Huang Zhe is a thorough observer yet with a sense of distance. His images are filled with the power to break conventions. Contemplation, mirrors, splashes... In these works, various freely flowing, diversely shaped lines are everywhere, sketching contours freely and unrestrainedly. Intense colours and cold-toned thin layers become lively and prominent due to the intervention of line elements, hiding tremendous power. A touch of pale orange evokes distant starlight in the fresh green painting.
