ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI presents After the Reaction, a group exhibition by CHEN Xiaozhi (b. 1980), LU Chunsheng (b. 1968), SUN Yiwen (b. 1991), and YAN Heng (b. 1982), which employs “chemistry” as a central metaphor to explore the ongoing effects of technological innovation, social structures, and historical narratives in contemporary life. Here, “chemistry” is not limited to a laboratory discipline but is understood as a mechanism of modernity concerned with transformation, refinement, acceleration, and control: technologies evolve, forms change, yet humanity’s impulse to convert the world into power and resources persists. In this sense, “chemistry” serves as a lens for understanding the structural contradictions of the contemporary world.

CHEN Xiaozhi constructs a contemporary “cabinet of curiosities” through foil, glass, and ancient craftsmanship. Her work does not aim to reproduce history; rather, it activates time in the act of viewing through light, reflection, and accumulation. In CHEN’s practice, what remains invariant is not the historical forms or material traditions themselves, but the very modes through which time is perceived, observed, and refracted—a perceptual structure that continuously operates through light, reflection, and sedimentation.

LU Chunsheng’s History of Chemistry originates from a photograph of an offshore drilling platform: a massive structure almost entirely exposed above the water, emerging like a foreign object from the sea. In his perspective, the Asia-Pacific region resembles a continuously operating alchemical workshop. Through photography, LU interprets modernization as an ongoing process of alchemy: technologies are constantly updated, narratives are constantly reshaped, yet the desire to convert the world into resources and objects of control remains unaltered. In works such as Hey! Lana and I Want to Be a Gentleman, this logic is translated into arrangements of bodies, spaces, and power: identities are updated, narratives rewritten, yet the ways in which power organizes the body persist.

YAN Heng’s painting focuses on structural residues that continue to operate after moments of change have ostensibly concluded. Renewed Continuum draws on the image of the Arhat Rāhula from Manpuku-ji Temple in Kyoto: the chest is opened to reveal a Buddha head within, and the body no longer functions as a complete individual but as a vessel through which meaning is stored, transmitted, and renewed. Grounded in the logic of inheritance, this figure is placed within a system composed of measuring instruments, circuitry, and utilitarian objects. Here, renewal no longer signifies rupture or rebirth, but a managed and maintained process—meanings may be replaced, while the structure itself continues to operate.

Under this premise, YAN’s Poem Porn series, can be understood as the material articulation of the same logic. Oysters belong simultaneously to marine ecology and to global systems of extraction, transportation, and consumption; their natural qualities and industrial logics converge on the surface, forming a material state that is repeatedly processed yet never fully resolved. No longer merely objects of observation, they become nodes within contemporary systems of cleaning, processing, and interpretation.

SUN Yiwen’s paintings position the body in states of imbalance, fall, and torsion, creating a distant resonance with classical depictions of “the fall” in art history. Unlike religious or fate-driven narratives, the bodies in his works are not struck down by divine will but are shaped by institutions, capital, and social structures. While the meaning of the body constantly shifts, the structures that govern it remain unyielding, becoming one of the most direct yet imperceptible manifestations of contemporary social conditions.

This exhibition does not aim to reconstruct history. Rather, by juxtaposing practices across media and generations, it examines structural residues that continue to operate even after profound social, technological, and material transformations. These residues are not historical relics; they are embedded in the present through material forms, bodily orders, and spatial logic, continuously shaping the mechanisms by which reality functions. The exhibition foregrounds the disjunction between surface-level change and deep structural continuity in contemporary life, revealing how such disjunctions are perceived, maintained, and reproduced within everyday experience.

Venue
ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI (2F-205, 30 Wen’an Road, Jing’an District)

Artists
CHEN Xiaozhi, LU Chunsheng, SUN Yiwen, YAN Heng

Exhibition Dates
16 January – 7 March, 2026

Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PM

Website
https://www.arariogallery.com

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

Contact
info@arariogallery.com

(Text and images courtesy of ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI)