AIKE is pleased to present Jiang Cheng’s solo exhibition, “The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other”, featuring paintings from the artist’s “U” series. The exhibition title derives from Peter Handke’s eponymous play. Jiang Cheng adopts a similar sense to describe the “dangerous moments” in painting. The exhibition will run from 5 November 2022 to 15 January 2023.
Jiang Cheng’s work often revolves around discussions of “viewing and the frameworks it produces”. By breaking the order of viewing, the artist transforms each present moment into an unfamiliar one, refusing the effective communication of meaning and content and returning art to those “dangerous moments” – a shivering moment when “I” engages with you (The world).
The “U” series, emphasizing painterly gestures, has been the main line of Jiang Cheng’s work since 2018. “U” can be regarded as an abbreviation of the subject “You”, which refers to the canvas in front of the artist that contains the painted marks; conceptually, it points to the “I”beyond the original world in one’s self-consciousness.
In Jiang Cheng’s creative process, due to the size, distance, time, and physical ability regarding the canvas, the artist gives up the eyes gazing on the image and the control of the overall picture. In doing so, the artist severs the control of the hand and the body dictated by one’s consciousness. Such rupture creates an incongruity like a shiver, ushering the artist into a precarious space between seeing and “not seeing” - a moment of strangeness. To address this condition, the artist begins to resist the momentum and habits of painterly gestures by completely freeing his bodily moments. Jiang Cheng refers to this painting experience as “The Shiver”. That is a return to the physicality of the body.
“There is no detail on the canvas that points to another. The moment of strangeness is the moment of silence, the moment of painting without painting.”