Jiang Zhi, Apologies (Alongshan) (still), 2023
Courtesy of the artist

Aranya Art Center is pleased to present Chinese artist Jiang Zhi's solo exhibition Life, which features nearly thirty works from 1997 to the present, outlining the artist's consistent and ongoing creative trajectory. Jiang Zhi works across a wide range of media, including photography, painting, video, and installation. Fiction and poetry have also been an important part of his artistic output. Consistently engaging with contemporary social and cultural issues, Jiang consciously positions himself at the intersection of poetry and sociology, while weaving mundane social and personal experiences into his works.

This exhibition is organized by Sun Wenjie, independent curator, and Jiang Ruoyu, curatorial assistant at the Aranya Art Center.

Wang Zhibo, Unmanned 1 (detail), 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 150 × 115 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue

Aranya Art Center is pleased to present Chinese artist Wang Zhibo's first museum exhibition, featuring 10 newly created paintings. Her practice explores the potential to stretch, condense, and twist the dimensions and complexity of time and space in painting, thereby investigating the possibility of the two-dimensional medium (painting) in depicting multi-dimensional spaces. Her work considers how the evolution of human visual experience is reflected within the pictorial frame.

This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director, and Wu Yiyang, exhibition coordinator at the Aranya Art Center.

Aranya Art Center under construction, May 4, 2018
Original image courtesy of Neri&Hu

Aranya Art Center, which opened its doors in May 2019, will be celebrating its 5-year anniversary this year. Visiting artist studios is a key component of our curatorial practice, which often does not immediately translate into visible projects. Which studios has the team visited in recent years? Why did we want to visit them? What did we take from these visits? Unlike a retrospective anniversary show, this exhibition invites five artists from our recent visits to highlight the institution's working process and program direction in an attempt to envision our future.

The exhibition is organized by the curatorial team at the Aranya Art Center: Damien Zhang, Wu Yiyang, Wang Jiaming, Gao Liangjiao, and Jiang Ruoyu.

Yuko Mohri, Shinjuku Station, November 2, 2015
From the series “Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo): Fieldwork,” 2009–2021
Courtesy of the artist

Aranya Art Center is pleased to present Japanese artist Yuko Mohri's first solo exhibition in China, showing a large site-specific installation and a series of photographic works. Yuko Mohri is an artist who creates installation and sculpture not to compose (or construct) but to focus on "events" that constantly shift according to various conditions, such as the environment. In recent years, she has also explored this idea through video and photography. In 2024, Yuko Mohri will represent Japan at the 60th Venice Biennale.

This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director, and Gao Liangjiao, curatorial assistant at the Aranya Art Center.

Members of the No Name Group at Beidaihe beach, October 1975
Left to right, front row: Wei Hai, Shi Xixi, Yang Yushu;
middle row: Ma Kelu, Zhang Wei, Shi Zhenyu, Zhao Wenliang, Zhao Rugang; back row, standing: Shao Xiaogang, Li Shan, Zheng Ziyan, Wang Aihe
Courtesy of the artist Zhang Wei

In 1975, during the Cultural Revolution, artists from the No Name Group (Wuming Huahui) visited Beidaihe twice for outdoor sketching. Taking this specific historical event as a starting point, this exhibition strives to reawaken the sensibility and creativity associated with "painting from life" as an artistic method. This exhibition engages with this action's revolutionary and rebellious historical significance, which has largely been forgotten as it has gradually become an ossified academic coursework for fine art students in China. In recent years, amidst a global public health crisis, the concept of the "outdoor" has been progressively appropriated as a stress response system, awaiting reflection and reconsideration. This exhibition looks at "painting from life" as both an artistic practice and a survival strategy, with a view to manifest its potential to stimulate individual self-awareness and to respond to the dramatic changes of our time.

This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director of Aranya Art Center, in collaboration with artist Chen Xiaoyi and curatorial assistant Gao Liangjiao.

Trevor Yeung, Soft ground, 2023
Exhibition view at Gasworks, London
Commissioned and produced by Gasworks, London;
Para Site, Hong Kong and Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao
Photo: Andy Keate, Courtesy of the artist

Aranya Art Center is pleased to present Trevor Yeung's solo exhibition, in partnership with Gasworks (London) and Para Site (Hong Kong). The practice of Trevor Yeung consistently excavates the inner logics of closed systems and the way in which such systems contain and create emotional and behavioural conditions. In his mixed-media works, carefully staged objects, animals, and plants function as aesthetic pretexts that delicately and ironically address notions of artificiality and the processes of human relations. In 2024, Trevor Yeung will represent Hong Kong at the 60th Venice Biennale.

This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director, and Gao Liangjiao, curatorial assistant at the Aranya Art Center.