Brought to Hong Kong by Beijing independent curator Fang Lei 方蕾, Contemporary by Angela Li presents yet another curated exhibition of the highest standard. “Fragments”, a group exhibition of 9 artists from China, explore the fragments of memories, ideas, fears in our lives that affect our state of mind. Art pieces in this exhibition include the “Container Series” from renowned Chinese sculptor Liu Jianhua 劉建華, which has also been selected for the 17th Biennale of Sydney (May 2010). Amongst the other artists exhibiting is the famous Beijing based author Anne Babe安妮寶貝, whose works are consistently ranked in the national bestselling listings; she will be showing her latest photography works.
“Fragments are natural, inevitable, but fragmentation is not inevitable. It is the result of the accumulation of events. When things are too fragmented, they never attract much attention in our lives, but when fragments appear in a sudden, explosive moment, they become important events. Current events, natural disasters, human affairs, all of these things appear in this manner, like they want to fragment man’s will. Because they are so trivial, they waste and scatter a lot of people’s time and effort.....
Fragment is not an individual; it cannot be discussed in parts. It is a perspective, a perspective and a path that wants you to enter it. When a speck of dust gets in your eyelids, you realise its power and the strange feeling it brings you. You instinctively push it out of your eyelid. It is your enemy, an intruder. You cannot tolerate its presence in your eye. When it returns to its own space, it is once again merely a speck of dust. We are surrounded by dust, and it gets close to us in many ways, entering our bodies through our mouths and noses and hidden places. We are afraid of our environments because we are afraid of it. Fragments are a form of permeation, one that can penetrate any opening. When we are afraid, it is like they have swallowed our entire bodies....
When we think about fragments, we often think about broken fragments with sharp edges. Those broken fragments are like new lives, fresh, shimmering, a bit piercing. Everyone has been a fragment like this, and then we all slowly pick up more fragments and become specks. Then thousands of these specks gather together, pressing each other, forming a collective will. And when these specks are spread out onto every street in the city, the collective will becomes fragments. You become powerless, and can no longer sing the chorus. You are still just a speck. What can a speck do, anyway?”
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