MadeIn Gallery is pleased to present Zheng Yuan\u2019s solo exhibition \u201cBare Minimum\u201d on March 16, 2024. This is the artist\u2019s second solo exhibition with MadeIn Gallery, following \u201cForward, Backward\u201d in 2020. Featuring five newly created video and sound installations, it demonstrates Zheng\u2019s diversified practice as he carries forward the exploration of visual language. The exhibition will extend his previous investigation of history, memory, and image production mechanisms, while showcasing the dispatch and reorganization of realistic elements in his latest projects.<\/p>\n
Physical experiences over the past\u00a0three years\u00a0have contained the \u201cbare minimum\u201d of movement, communication, mourning, and, not least, dignity, hope, among much more. \u201cBare Minimum\u201d does not come with a prescribed noun, nor does it detect the limits of the development of things or the scope of action. Instead,\u00a0it connotes a pray for returning. A motive for his artistic creation, \u201cBare Minimum\u201d originates from Zheng\u2019s intent to give active feedback to passive limitations as well as his efforts to construct a time-space of rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
In Bare Minimum (A Walk) (2023-present), the artist follows nine people respectively as they walk at nightfall, forging ahead with the guidance of memory or meaning. The camera\u00a0trails closely, anonymity and reticence both immersed within a single movement and perspective. The distance betrays a willingness to approach, be it in following or accompanying. The four-channel video installation Bare Minimum (By Memory)\u00a0(2024) hints at a reboot, where the re-mastering of skills reveals a recovery of memory, and also enables a re-operation of certain modes of interaction. As they listen, read, play music or games, multiple characters appear back and forth between adjacent screens and engage in the simplest forms of collaboration or confrontation. Here, sound brings movements into a shared space. In the single-channel video Ruby\u00a0(2024), a diary of the deceased occupies the center of the\u00a0frame, whose text is occasionally illuminated by fireworks in between prolonged moments of darkness and silence; even in the most intimate narrative, memory desires to \u201cbe seen\u201d, but that desire has to be illuminated through a medium. The two-channel video and sound installation A Humble\u00a0Life (Two People) is a discovery and reproduction of the medium, in which sound attenuation conveys expressions of loss. The concreteness of objects and the abstraction of sound form a contrast and hew out a tunnel in time. Hepingli Playthrough (2021-2023), a single-channel video also on view, is created intermittently over the past three years and resonates with the evolution of real time. Borrowing the save and load system in classic games, the work constructs a narrative space capable of being replayed. It draws on fiction to parody the irreversibility of history while offering opportunities for active choices.<\/p>\n
Works in the exhibition benefit from the generous support of the Huayu Youth Award and the New Century Art Foundation.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":6530,"template":"","tags":[48],"exhibitions_type":[7],"class_list":["post-6529","exhibitions","type-exhibitions","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-zhengyuan","exhibitions_type-madein-gallery-exhibitions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions\/6529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibitions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6529"},{"taxonomy":"exhibitions_type","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madeingallery.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions_type?post=6529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}