ARCH GALLERY is honored to participate as one of the representative art institutions from the South in the annual major exhibition of the Pingshan Art Museum — Nomads in the South: Rivers, Tunnels, Humid Heat, Star Clusters.
"Nomads in the South" is a large-scale group exhibition of Southern artists launched by the Pingshan Art Museum on December 23, 2023. Following the museum’s "Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series," curated between 2021 and 2023 to map the local ecological landscape, this exhibition presents an even more expansive, vibrant, and challenging survey—both a continuation and a reconfiguration of the cultural soil.
Carrying forward the traditional literati ethos inherited from the Song and Ming dynasties while continually driving the transformations of modern and contemporary China, Hunan—though not occupying the vanguard position in the writing of modern art history—has nonetheless activated and guided the currents of contemporary Chinese art through its surging cultural undercurrents. From the pioneering calls for change by the "Zero Art Group" to the foreshadowing of the "China/Avant-Garde" exhibition, Hunan has consistently provided spiritual impetus and cultural context for Chinese contemporary art with its independent and daring stance.
"Only in Chu are talents found; here they flourish most abundantly." The rolling hills and the flowing Xiang River have endowed artists from this region not only with the resilience of traditional Hunan spirit but also with a unique identity and cultural atmosphere rooted in this land of unadorned folk character. These have left indelible marks of the times on the emergence of contemporary art. This, of course, also serves as the foundational tone for ARCH GALLERY's participation in the Southern-themed exhibition at the Pingshan Art Museum, as a voice and pioneer of contemporary art from Hunan.
The six participating artists were all born in the Hunan region, spanning generations from the 1960s to the millennials. They reflect the journey of Hunan artists of diverse identities in the development of contemporary art while showcasing cultural experiences aligned with the progression of the times and the contrasting experiences of spatial displacement, revealing the evolution from early identity contradictions to transcendence through mobility. From Luo Mingjun, who embarked on her painting career in the West after starting with the "Zero Art Group," to Zhou Li and Zhou Wei, who have witnessed the interactive dynamics of contemporary art between Hunan and Guangdong while based at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and to Wang Lijun, Guo Yujian, and Chen Qiushi, who fully represent the growth and development trajectories of young artists of different ages both domestically and internationally in recent years—ARCH GALLERY seeks to outline the concrete, vivid, yet often concealed trajectory of modern and contemporary art in Hunan through dual academic and historical threads.
At the groundbreaking "China/Avant-Garde" exhibition held at the National Art Museum of China in 1989, which ignited contemporary discourse, Hunan artists were collectively absent. This may have been due to the overly distinctive personalities of Hunan artists at the time, which did not coalesce into a clear collective identity recognized by history. Turning to the present, as Pingshan emphasizes the "South," regional identity has once again become a crucial topic for contemporary art to sustain its cultural logic. The mobility of artists across different locations transcends geographical boundaries while remaining grounded in shared experiences, forming a densely woven network of connections. These cultural nomads, with their unique individual experiences and expressions, have emerged from Hunan and, with the accumulation of temporal variables, are scripting diverse narratives. Nurtured locally and later connected to external ideas through displacement, artists consciously or unconsciously inherit the characteristics of their region, continuously exploring, constructing, and reinventing.
Art is always evidence of the reality it portrays. Standing on this soil, we sincerely hope to translate and present the contemporary characteristics and historical potential of Hunan culture. ARCH GALLERY is committed to pioneering the local contemporary art ecosystem and fostering better two-way exchanges with the global art market. With a reflective curatorial approach, we conduct academic research on the development of contemporary art and engage in art collection, maintaining creative speculative thinking beyond the perpetual cycle of operations, and eloquently narrating the artistic experiences rooted here.
