Cub_ism_ Artspace is pleased to announce the participation in 2025 Hong Kong Art Central and will present artist ZHENG Lanxiong’s solo project “Closet Space”at Booth B11.

Closet, the most paradoxical container in human experience, guards privacy while suggesting openness. In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard reveals the paradox of closed space: the locking closet guards the secret, while the presence of the locking hole suggests a latent desire to be opened. As a kind of ‘sentimental’ fine furniture, the space of each partition in the closet is at once juxtaposed with the real space and, in a compressed form, holds the fragments of memory excluded from the daily order.

This exhibition opens to the audience Zheng Lanxiong’s ‘Closet Space’, in which more than a dozen paintings on board and stone clay are displayed, presenting Zheng Lanxiong’s individual memories and artistic explorations. The moment the door opens and closes, the camphor breath wraps around the dust rising from the sunlight, a hidden invitation from the private sphere to the public space.

Zheng Lanxiong’s creations continue to be a tug of war between the body and the layers of colours. While the viewer tries to capture the colours of his paintings with their eyes, the images push the perception into the realm of subtle emotions —— the slight uneasiness of the spider crawling over the palm of your hand, the warmth of a hand protecting a candle flame, the pain of an electric current at the moment of a needle piercing the earlobe, the taste of iron licked by the tongue when extracting the wisdom teeth…The visual ambiguity that the image ultimately presents is precisely the native state of the body’s experience.

The artist’s work is time-consuming and labour-intensive. He is used to using tempera to stack layers on wooden boards, with each layer of colour pigment fixed as an absolute time coordinate at the moment of solidification of the medium; and the pressure of fingerprints and scratches of tools absorbed by the stone clay sculptures during the shaping stage are all endowed with the artist’s emotional fluctuations at the moment of creation. Thus, through the presentation of each cabinet, the viewer can see a small piece of the artist’s ‘individual experience’, and find a sense of déjà vu in the painting; but in fact, for Zheng Lanxiong, each piece of fragmented memory is only a small piece of himself.

Venue
Booth B11, 6/F, 8 Queen’s Road East, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China

Artist
Zheng Lanxiong

Curator
Qinru Zhou

Exhibition Dates
March 25 – March 30, 2025

Website
https://en.cubismartspace.com

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/cub_ism_artspace

Contact
info@cubism-artspace.com

About the artist

Born in 1996 in Ningde, Fujian Province, Zheng Lanxiong graduated from the Mural Painting Department of the China Academy of Art as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate, and now lives in Changzhou. His works are collected by the Sydney White Rabbit Gallery and the CAA Art Museum.

Zheng Lanxiong takes the emotional connection between the individual and the image when viewing as the entry point of his creation, emphasising on the expression of personal life experiences, emotions and memories in the picture.Starting from people or things in daily life, he intercepts the fragmented parts through his personalised perspective, trying to grasp a certain subtle atmosphere, state and mood in the process of covering and recreating the paintings of Tempera. 

About the gallery

Cub_ism_ Artspace was established in Shanghai in 2020 and is located in an Art Deco style heritage architecture in the core area of The Bund. Jointly founded by three post – 90s who have backgrounds in curating and literary writing, “curatorial language” is our priority. Cub_ism_ Artspace introduces inspiring emerging artists to the world. We focus on individual practices and expressions of artists from different backgrounds, especially young artists. While engaging in the Chinese contemporary art ecosystem, we also actively participate in art fairs and projects overseas.

Cub_ism_ Artspace will launch “Site Site” in 2025. As a Focused, Flowing and Ongoing Curatorial Project, “Site Site” plans to present exhibitions focusing on “site-specific” in different regions and will have its first project in London. 

We think that the contemporary art, as an experience collection of historical records, emotional expressions and academic research, has the power to influence human spirituality and social morality; we firmly believe “ART WILL STAY”.

(Text and images courtesy of Cub_ism_ Artspace)