Solo Exhibition
Yell Space, Shanghai, 2019
Download Yell Space press release (Chinese version of the work Words of Art)
Exhibition Introduction (Chinese)
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This exhibition is part of the ongoing project “Words of Art” by Ce Jian and Yuzheng Cheng which began in 2018. The project originated from the collection of over 1,500 press releases published by galleries from all over the world on the exhibition platform Dailyartfair.com in 2017-18. Using word frequency analysis software, they identified the most commonly occurring words in these texts, revealing certain tendencies and conventions.
These statistics are visualized in the form of a site-specific wall installation in Room A of Yell Space Shanghai, where the walls are covered with A4-sized sheets of colored paper, each color corresponding to a specific word. The space transforms into a map illustrating the linguistic habits of the art world, with the random contours and sizes of the colored papers reflecting the hierarchical and logical relationships behind the words.
In Room B, they present a document issued by the Shanghai municipal government titled “Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Shanghai Tourism and Accelerating the Construction of a World-Famous Tourism City.” Similarly, they analyzed the word frequency in the document and replaced the most frequent words with the words extracted from the gallery press releases. As an administrative document invaded by artistic terminology, the automatically transformed text is both bureaucratic and artistic in tone and content, creating a strange and exaggerated chemical reaction between two different linguistic contexts. Following the strongly ideological tone of the official government text, the duo created a series of ironic, humorous works including photographs, collages, paintings and sketches, which reflect the absurdly ambitious spirit of the newly generated text.
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Worklist
Image 1: Exhibition poster, Yell Space Shanghai
Image 2-6: Words of Art, 2019, wall installation with colored paper, dimensions variable
Image 10: Words of Art, 2019, digital print on colored paper, 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Image 11-14: High-Quality Painting, 2019, pencil, marker, collage on paper, photographs, dimensions variable
Image 15-16: Ambition, 2019, 28 Polaroid photographs
Image 17-20: Epic Pieces, 2019, 11 digital prints, 25 x 25 cm
Image 21-26: New Sculpture Capital, 2019, mixed media, dimensions variable
Image 27-28: Words of Art 1 & 2, 2019, acrylic, pencil, marker on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm x 2
Image 29: Artists’ Portrait Sketch, 2019, watercolor and marker on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm, mounted on decorative paper
Image 30: Big Players, 2019, tempera on paper, 41 x 31 cm
Image 31: Yangtse Installation Belt, 2019, dimensions variable
