Leap of Utopia
Espacio Gallery, London E2 7DG
22 - 27 November 2022
Opening Night: 22 November 6 - 8 pm
This exhibition is a very expansive 'leap', intended to connect artists of all nationalities, ages and professions, large and small, and to create a dialogue between different depictions of utopia. Looking through the eyes of these children and adults, we desire to challenge our perception of reality. Perhaps no utopia will ever finally be realised, but every attempt to take a leap towards it creates hope for ourselves and the people and things around us in an inadequate reality.
In the imagination of new utopias, children and artists can always bring inspiration. Children are natural artists, their unregulated minds still retaining a curiosity about the world that allows them to understand and depict everything around them in a wildly unrealistic way. This unrealistic childishness has become a critical and transcendent power in a repressed and crystallized reality. And artists often use this childishness to create work that allows them to break through certainties and prejudices, question and challenge established stereotypes or hierarchies, and sketch alternative histories, realities or futures.
Names of Participating Artists:
Daishu (Andi), Yuqi Pan, Jinze Chen (Max), Saya Zhang, Qianran Chen (Rainbow), Xiaoye Han (Dva), Nathan Xu, Yanzhe Wang (Toby), Xiaoshi Zhang, Chuhuan Sun, Qingyuan Yu (Natalie), Yibai, Ziya Lin, Szu-yuan Lee, Hongtao Li, Hailing Liu, Zitai Zhang, Yidan Xie, Junchao Ren, Hao Xing, Linda Shen, Yang Tian, Winnie Zhu
The universe chaos
The tornado went wild
Day after day the hail lashed everything
There's a crack in the universe
The air is getting thinner
The world has lost its light
The beautiful sun goddess is coming at this moment
She is radiant and compassionate
She tried to mend the crack
And all things are born again
Light returns to the earth
700mm*1200mm, acrylic paints, 2022
Thin, long, and tenuity
Round, mutilated, various shapes
rhizomes, branches, bark flowers
came to my world
entwined, slender, holding hands
A blossoming branch blooms
delicate and beautiful
800mm*1200mm, acrylic paints, 2022
There was a babbling stream in the green pipe
It nourishes the growth of the branches
Ripening the fruit
Vine with multiple layer
Let's conspire!
Take a rock
Aim for the elves guarding the tree
Grab the fruits
Is it a dream or a trap,
Beware of that eye in the dark.
The blinking red eyes
He laughed at the change of time
800mm*1200mm, 3 pieces, acrylic paints, 2022
With the collision of natural and original historical elements and pop culture, interesting events take place in the territory of the mysterious tribe
The world is too serious and I like to dream
I want to explore the possibilities of the other world
1000mm*1200mm, acrylic paints, 2022
In the alien night, the starry sky is colorful, alien flowers are looking at the world, happily expecting for the unknown life.
500mm*700mm, acrylic paints, pastel, pigment, 2022
I believe that everyone has a paradise in their hearts, so I use the colors and images that I think can best express happiness to awaken the viewers' beautiful vision for the future. May we all have free souls and infinite imagination!
700mm*1000mm, acrylic paints, 2022
grow and wither
want to reverse time
Turn the clock
back to the beginning
so what?
better run away
escape into oneself
I don't have a clock inside
only myself
Thoughts last forever
500mm*700mm, acrylic paints, charcoal, 2022
The church was broken through the ceiling, and the twisting vines wantonly growing from the crack. With the sighs and croons of angels, people depart like birds breaking out of their cages.
Looking for their own world.
800mm*1200mm, acrylic paints, clay, 2022
In the morning after sunrise,
A lot of unknown things happened.
The teapot grew legs and eyes,
Red wine spewed from the cap of the teapot,
Sprayed into wine glasses that are partying together here.
The wine glass can't hold too much,
It was scattered all over the place.
But not all black hats. Two invisible men in black hats are playing UNO cards, the fallen gems are glowing blue-violet light and they both forget the passage of time...
1000mm*1200mm, acrylic paints, 2022
Come to the misty forest and feel the mysterious atmosphere. There seems to be music in the depths of the forest, like a human figure? It was the puppets that were holding the stage play, and the monsters that I had never seen were dancing happily beside them. I couldn't help to get closer and closer. My body became like a piece of wood, and I danced with them.
1000mm*1500mm, acrylic paints, soft pastel, 2022
Time splits, separating good from evil. The fruit of blooming gorgeous temptation is at the entrance of the devil, and after the ignorant person touches it, there is no turning back. Take a small boat and go deep into the hinterland along the mysterious river, turning into a deer, and there is only a ruined civilization and a hometown that cannot be returned. The goddess who symbolizes life and light stares into the distance silently, the eyes of time and space stare solemnly, and the division continues...
1000mm*1500mm, acrylic paints, 2022
One day, I had a strange dream. I went into the Dry(my pet)’s belly, and there was a colorful world more than I thought, I met a lot of friends there. The red heart inside is supposed to be dry, will it be the same as mine? I'll miss the big blue snail with a long neck, he little pink and the white rabbit. And don't forget there is a very scary looking Mr. Virus, I will miss you too, I will have a chance to come back, goodbye!
600mm*800mm, acrylic paints, 2022
The basic direction of painting is to practice questioning the traditional message conveyed by language, expanding and complex narrative forms, textual structure and musical order, linear time concepts.
The works try to establish a subconscious space in the order of breaking the time, between the controllable and the uncontrollable, try to establish an abstract programming space by detaching from the entity, and present the many paintings in the way of writing, breaking, linear narrative, time, space, nature, etc. a possibility. Exploring the unknown castle——
Experiment to break through the space of language and imagination, not to define anything and not to be defined.
, 400mm*500mm, watercolour, 2022
Ziya Lin is an artist based in Beijing, who graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2022. Exhibitions she has participated in and awards received include: Commemoration of Gaokao achieved second place in the Luo Gongliu Youth Creation Award of the CAFA Exhibition Track of Youth in 2018, Dong Dong Qiang won the popular award in the 10th New Star Art Festival Annual Exhibition in 2019, Lucifer’s Effect attended to SAP in 2020, the Creation Star of CAFA in 2020, participated the artist forum of Cross-Strait and Hong-Kong and Macau in 2021, Temporary Lounge Area was presented at CAFA Graduation Exhibition in 2022.
oil painting on canvas, 203mm*254mm, 2020
Szu-yuan lee is the founder of a landscape design firm and a brand. He has long been committed to exploring artistic elements in his living environment and creating his own works of art.
digital painting, 1600mm*900mm, 2022
Hongtao Li is a Hangzhou-based artist from the China Academy of Art.
WeChat: Li-GDer
Pink Conch, digital print, 450mmx300mm, 7 pieces
Hailing Liu (b.1997, China) is a mixed-media artist and an animator living in Chicago. Her work focuses on social-political issues and media representations in our contemporary life.
Website: liu-hailing.com
Instagram: hailingjo
Please visit her Instagram profile, click the effects icon ( the three stars) above the feed tab and get the ice cream headquarter AR filter when you look at this piece.
Zitai Zhang (b.1996, China) is a crossover art creator, digital artist and space designer, who graduated from GAFA. He set up a personal virtual art lab called ‘B.B.BAM’. The series of his work is based on the constructed story world system and the narrative space, where ‘human' and ‘things' are combined yet derived.
WeChat: cz905634826
Instagram: 1ziat_bbbam
The Red: B.B.BAM*車間爆炸
Yidan Xie is a versatile artist and designer based in Shanghai, who features animation, illustration, motion graphics, visual design and sound production. Her works always focus on mythical creatures and the fantasy world to discuss the relationship between humans, animals and nature.
Junchao lives and works between London and Chengdu. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2022. He is interested in architectural space and the ways people intervene with it through modes of habitation, illegal renovations and fixes, and the conflict between architectural master plans and the way that people (and artists) make interventions in these structures to live their lives effectively or puncture the design of the space to allow in other ways of living or experiencing space. Traces are the thread of his work. Different traces reflect the different trajectories and conditions of people's lives in the city.
Website: https://singasongontheground.wordpress.com/junchou-ren/
Instagram: renjunchao1
800mmx500mmx300mm, 2022
Hao Xing is a London-based artist who was born in Shenzhen, China. His works explore the relationship between individuals and society, contemporary urban experiences and the alienation of ideologies. Symbols and visual elements are constantly used in the pictures to explore the ambiguities and complexities of subjects.
WeChat: hao010221
Instagram: x_ing
oil on canvas, 750mm*750mm, 750mm*1000mm, 2pieces
2022
Linda is a multimedia artist, featuring cover paintings, performances, installations and digital media. Her pieces explore cosmology through dreams and the subconscious, with a film-like narrative and romantic style, such as The Era of Tang-Gene Resurrection, Chinese Music Talking to the Sky, and Realer than Real.
, oil, fabric, acrylic paints, gold powder, fluorescent glue, 500mm in diameter, 2022
YangTian was born in Beijing and now lives in Tokyo, and Seoul. He is a painter, a contemporary metal artist, and a critical thinker about traditional culture in East Asia. He believes in what Zhuang Zi said - 'Be a useless person’. He praise the marginal and ignored groups, and expresses dissatisfaction and uncooperation with the authorities, by using the seemingly useless dead vine rotten wood, moss, fallen leaves, and mushrooms in daily life.
Instagram: yangtian812
WeChat: Ytian812
copper, silver, silver guiding, patina, 75mm*53mm*96mm
Crooked Gourd, copper, patina, brass, gold leaf, 150mm*130mm*205mm
Winnie Zhu was born in Shanghai and now lives in Beijing. She is an emerging artist, who sticks to searching her inner self as well as being an observer of her surroundings. That is to say, her pieces tend to be hybrids of confession and observation.
painting: Test1, oil painting, 9000mm*12000mm, 2022