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Luo Xian-Mei is the assistant curator of False.
Chen Wei, Records Hypnosis, 2007. Courtesy of the Artist.The exhibition False, organized by Platform China, talks about the spread of falseness as an active element in our life. In contemporary China, as the pace of the society development is increasing, people feel the need to use culture-related things to guard themselves against the tide of this development, which breeds a pseudo-culture. As people bring so much hypocrisy into the civilization, False aims to examine the threat by intensifying the falseness from the artists’ personal perspectives.
In an industrial civilization like the one in China today, falseness is ubiquitous: pseudo-science, pseudo-culture, pseudo-art, pseudo-rock, pseudo-concept, pseudo-difference, pseudo-fashion. The artists in False intend to translate in their works that individuals, even groups, are becoming lost. The characters in Chen Wei’s and Jin Shan’s works are those who can’t find their own way. Wang Ning-De exchanges, on purpose, the characters’ identities to reveal the inexistent euphoria. Ma Yong-Feng deals with nature while Yang Long-Hai depicts people’s lust.
False, in a way, is a presentation of man, who is on one hand ambitious and, on the other, ashamed of his hypocritical attitude. People have long been tormented by their inherent sins. As the modern civilization evolves, human beings are confined to conceptualization, formulation, symbolization, dramatization, singleness, and homogeneity.
Artists, like the ones in False, are not people who work simply to please others nor do they pretend to be. With an artistic vision, artists set people free from distraught through their works.
