SHANGHAI.- On 20 March 2025, the Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai opens Vitalisms, an exhibition by artists CAI Zebin, CAO Xiang, CUI Jie, GAO Xiaoyi, LI Ran, XIE Lingrou, and ZHENG Zhilin, as the second season of its current artistic research program Lightless Fires (2024–26), exploring fermentation as a figure and technique of collective memory, autonomous archiving, and writing history.

Vitalisms is an exhibition-as-experiment initiating a long-term research and education project on the "historicity" and "value" of contemporary painting in China. We begin our research by gathering a group of artists, born in the 1980s and 90s in China and mostly educated in Chinese art academies, and by focusing on figurative paintings made in the past five years (i.e., since 2020). We experiment with their presentation in a shared space and time, to ask: How are they situated in history? What could they tell us about the time and place in which they were made? Could we anticipate their historicization as documents of personal and/or collective memory in the future? In what ways could they become a counter-hegemonic archive?

The title of this exhibition, Vitalisms, derives from art critic and historian Isabelle Graw’s theory of painting’s particularity not as a medium, but rather as a type of sign production that is experienced as deeply visceral and highly personalized. A painting’s pictorial signs point first to their material and corporeal form, which then can be read as traces of activity and felt as “haptic events” on their surface – and it is from here which “vitalistic fantasies” emerge. Throughout painting’s history, various vitalistic fantasies have been projected onto the painting as a material object: an image of liveliness, an agent with divine power to bring dead matter to life, an artifact of the artist’s life and presence, and a living subject itself. Could we possibly extend these vitalistic fantasies to think further of paintings as a reflecting subject – a knowing and thinking agent capable of effecting change in our modes of understanding the world? Could painting, when made and understood as socially and historically contingent, also act upon the world itself?

With the launch of Vitalisms, when we ask about the historicity of painting, we are not asking about the historical accuracy of a painting in terms of what it depicts, i.e., “what really happened?” as an ontological question. The accuracy of history is one that can never be answered as we cannot directly observe the past. We can only indirectly observe the effects of the past, including paintings as cultural artifacts. Endowed with life, whether projected upon it as fantasy or immanent to its material being, paintings speak to us and act upon the world. Paintings represent and make shifts in our modes of understanding the world. Our question is an epistemological one, “how do we know what really happened?”

Vitalisms is accompanied by several related events, including a screening of new documentary films by emerging filmmakers centered around Shanghai’s Workers’ New Villages, a presentation of research-in-progress on post-colonial representation in modern Chinese painting, and a series of conversations with the participating artists.

CAI Zebin (b. 1988, Shantou) graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2012. The often whimsical and fantastic scenes in Cai’s paintings draw inspiration from his extensive knowledge of art history and literature, reinterpreting existing motifs and devices to evaluate the process of painting and, ultimately, making art. His most recent body of work redirects his exploration to life around his hometown, inspired by everyday life. Starting from the self-awareness of his identity as a painter, the artist acts as both the witness and the creator of the portrayed scenes, constructing a mystical world where everything is imbued with life and soul. Cai has exhibited in institutions and galleries across China, Europe, and North America, including recent solo presentations at Capsule (Shanghai, 2024, 2020); TC101 SPACE at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2022); and L21 (Mallorca, 2021). He lives and works in Shantou.

CAO Xiang (b. 1995, Nanjing) holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine arts, focusing on easel painting, from the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. Through his paintings, he playfully explores heterogeneous perceptions in everyday life, delving into the unknown experiences hidden behind familiar scenes from a detached perspective. He refines and abstracts visual appearances to create his works. Cao's paintings serve as observational diaries, capturing the subtle nuances of everyday life. His compositions and use of light, which straddle the line between realism and abstraction, defamiliarize the ordinary, evoking a sense of playful alienation. His works create a tranquil space for contemplation, inviting the audience to see the familiar in a new light. Cao has exhibited in institutions across China, including recent solo presentations at SNAP Art Center (Shanghai, 2024), Eastlink Tower (Shenzhen, 2024), INJOY ART SPACE (Shanghai, 2020). He was nominated for the 7th John Moores Painting Prize (China) in 2022. He lives and works in Shenzhen and Shanghai.

CUI Jie (b. 1983, Shanghai) graduated from the Oil Painting department of the China Academy of Art. The modernization, the development of city landscape and the unified and tedious style of contemporary architecture has always been one of the topics being discussed in her paintings of cities. Connecting and intertwining visions of the past and the present under her brushstrokes, Cui expresses her nostalgia for the past and a seemingly utopian exploration for the future landscape, and hence evokes the viewer’s collective nostalgia. Cui has exhibited in institutions, biennials, and galleries across China, Asia, Europe, and North America, including recent solo presentations at the West Bund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2023), Pilar Corrias (London, 2023), Focal Point Gallery (Essex, UK, 2022), and esea contemporary (Manchester, 2019; formerly the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art). She lives and works in Shanghai.

GAO Xiaoyi (b. 1996, Chengdu) holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Fine Art from the University of Washington. Gao’s work is founded on both existing and subconscious images, with the entanglement of time, space, and poetic sentiment at its center. By combining readymade objects with traditional painting materials, she presents reflections on her hometown, nostalgia, personal identity, history, and relationships. Her work deliberately avoids intense narrative, often resembling an empty shot in a film; through this intentional negative space, viewers can experience time in a way that transcends the physical objects and space. Gao has exhibited in galleries and artist-run projects in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seattle, New York, and Warsaw, including a recent solo exhibition at Gene Gallery (Shanghai, 2024). She was a grantee of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in 2024 and 2018 and an artist-in-residence at the Swatch Peace Hotel Artist Residency (Shanghai, 2024). She lives and works in Shanghai.

LI Ran (b. 1986, Hubei) graduated from the Oil Painting Department at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2009. Li’s practice ranges across multiple media from installation, performance and writing, to video and painting, with utilization of archival photos, staged photography, vocal mimicry, and sound performance. In recent years, he has been researching stage art, make-up design, and the production of translated foreign films, in the context of modern China. Simultaneously, he has curated a collection of case studies from the 1930s, featuring the work of satirical cartoonists and leftist and romantic authors from complex social backgrounds. As a felt personal response by the artist, these endeavors connect with the diverse circumstances of those “humble intellectuals” in the present-day art industry. For over a decade, Li has exhibited in galleries, institutions, and biennials across China, Asia, Europe, and North America. He lives and works in Shanghai.

XIE Lingrou (b. 1999, Zhanjiang) first studied painting at Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and later in the Expressionist Painting Studio at Capital Normal University. Her work originates from a personal perspective of reshaping life forms, seeking formal resources within her unique life experiences, while also digging out the objects depicted from the depths of her memory, attempting to establish a fitting connection between the two. Xie’s paintings are characterized by the appropriation of real images on canvas and the presentation of various fragmented memories, blending both living and non-living entities. She reconstructs her memories through individual self-schema, simulating the process of rewriting and overlaying memory through multi-layered and obscured imagery. Xie has exhibited in institutions across China, including recent solo presentations at Nan Ke Gallery (Shanghai, 2024) and Click Ten Gallery (Beijing, 2023). She lives and works in Hangzhou.

ZHENG Zhilin (b. 1991, Guangdong) received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Painting from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Fascinated with distorted and deviated perspectives, Zheng’s work enthralls the viewer with a vivid tableau unfolded by the strong tension between the imaginative space and eccentric body. While preoccupied with an alternative expression, oscillating between solidity and fluidity, of power in the self-sustained body, her painting presents an intricate interplay between the eyes and the object. Through her subtle rendering of light and depiction of omnipresent wandering eyes, Zheng’s work traverses between the eternal and the ephemeral, exploring the individual’s relationship with its surroundings. Zheng has exhibited in galleries across China, Europe, and North America, including recent solo presentations at LINSEED (Shanghai, 2024 and 2022) and ZONAMACO (Mexico City, 2023) . She lives and works in Guangzhou.