EVENT DESCRIPTION
Familiar strangeness is the state of memory’s raw, untrimmed edges — where clarity and mystery entwine.
Xu Chenyang’s Drifting Island series offers a visual transformation of a contemporary experience of existence. In this age of digital overload, our minds often encounter moments when the familiar suddenly slips into the realm of the strange — a common Chinese character loses its meaning after prolonged gaze, a well-loved melody turns eerie in a certain light. Through subtle shifts in timeless symbols — castles, Taihu stones, ladders, horses — Xu elevates these fleeting moments of cognition into a contemplative visual fable.
His canvases become Rorschach tests of perception, where viewers find reflections of their own cognitive workings and limits in forms that feel at once known and elusive. This art, both rooted in tradition and boldly avant-garde, concrete yet metaphysical, may well be the unique contribution of contemporary Chinese painting in a global dialogue — not a mere echo of Western trends nor a shallow revival of old symbols, but a sincere painterly quest that births a new visual poetry for our era.
