EXHIBITONS

At its start, the works from Yangmeng Zhang are from her series under the motif of Decaffeinated Love. Caffeine, known as a central nervous system stimulant, can drive away drowsiness and restore energy temporarily. Coffee, tea, soft drinks, and energy drinks with caffeine have been selling so well that Elon Musk once announced the purchase of Coca-Cola to add cocaine back into the drink. In a sense, this drink created and prevailed since the 19th century owes to several factors: high sugar, low cost, caffeine, and high advertising value; they contributed to the complete change in the meaning of drink for human beings, as desire usurped the place and became necessity. The figures in Zhang's paintings have polished, porcelain-like skin, recalling how the porcelain items exported in the last century were one of the most essential products in foreign trade, and how they were often used to portray celebrities and diplomatic figures. The porcelain figures embracing and kissing each other was the standard layout in the window of every home in the 80s and 90s. Here, the painting Endless Love is also a pair of figures in entanglement. The artist depicts a homosexual couple, one of which has an expressionless head that is cut away by the close-up shot, and isolated as if a still life painting, the empty expression points to its separation from other erotic signifiers: "Capitalism has accelerated the process of eroticization of society, by displaying everything as a commodity for all to see. These displays are useless except for sex. It vulgarizes love and turns it into pornography." In The Agony of Eros, Byung-Chul Han illustrates how, in a neoliberal society, primitive desires are eliminated and reproduced as pornography that can be circulated by capitalism. Man, Woman, and Blue shows bodies as if drawn on an iPad drawing board, while Daffodil presents plastic skin that has been transformed into still life in a similar way. In I Will Never Stop Loving You, organs and body parts that can be assembled like dolls are the keys to this configuration of eroticism, but it is also at the moment they are disembodied that they seem to struggle for the last dignity as eroticism being erased.

Item added to cart

EXHIBITONS

Beak and Coal

Nostalgia

II Trovatore @ BMCA

Pillow Talk @ Aurora Museum

That’s How We Grow Up

Position; Reposition

The Retinue of Dionysus

Thus Have We Seen

The Sting of Time

Make a Sentence

Enrichment

Incomplete Wonder · Everlasting Land

THE FLUID SANCTUARY @ Aurora Museum

The Skin

Dendrites

Evolution：Singularity

Cookie preferences