Inside The Cradle, Outside The Cradle
SHANGZUN Gallery , 2024

On September 21, 2024, the Shangzun Gallery in Beijing 798 Art Zone ushered in an exhibition full of poetic feeling and wise thought, Inside the Cradle, Outside the Cradle. The exhibition discussed about the profound connection between individuals and the world through diversified media and abundant artistic language.

The image cradle was taken as the core of the exhibition. It not only symbolized the starting point of life, but also carried the metaphors of memories, belongings and variations. In such a space full of emotions and memories, artists led audiences to start a dialogue about life and time on The exhibition put forward a central question that directly touched the spirit, "do you still remember the scene when you were born?" It is both the trace of the origin and the exploration of time and space.

The exhibition started from Bachelard's poetics to discuss about the symbolic meaning of the cradle as the earliest container of memories of individual live. Artists used self-interpretation to extend the metaphor of life to the circulated relation between individuals and the world and create a broad land of spirit with symbolic meanings.

The exhibition interpreted the symbol of the "cradle" in multiple dimensions, which surpassed the traditional thinking of binary opposition. The cradle is not only a container of individual memories, but also symbolizes the interaction and competition between the individual and the external world. Starting from the first meeting between an infant and the world to the reunion of the individual and its hometown, the world out of the cradle is just like the cradle itself, including infinite lives and transitions.

The exhibition invited audiences to follow artists' train of thinking, review the relationship between themselves and the world and perceive the eternal theme of "growth, separation and regression" of life in such an implicit space extending infinitely.

With the exploration of each artist's work based on diversified media, the exhibition gradually created a space with interweaved sensibility and rationality. The relationship between the individual and the world was reconstructed in friction and circulation in this space, and the images of death and rebirth intersected at this moment. At last, audiences not only wandered in and out of the cradle, but also sought for themselves in the cradle and contact unknown matters out of the cradle.

The exhibition was held in the Shangzun Gallery of the 798 Art Zone of Beijing. Artists opened a door leading to the innermost part for us through their unique interpretation and artistic expression of life. Just like what the exhibition speech said, "the part outside the cradle is still a cradle", the exhibition ended in such a form. It is both an end and a new start.