Hive Center for Contemporary Art and XYZ Gallery - Beijing

In the vast 798 Art District, galleries dedicated to photography are rare, but I also enjoy exploring other forms of art. It is often a chance to reflect on how art is presented and explained.

At the Hive Center for Contemporary Art, two exhibitions, Ontologies of Matter and Entanglements of Walden, left me wondering. The exhibition texts were so elaborate, so obscure, that reading them felt almost like an ordeal. Yet I remain convinced that what is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed: clarity is not the enemy of depth.

Ontology of Matter

Curiously, the artworks on display told quite another story. They were colorful, almost naïve paintings, full of spontaneity and life.

Huang Yuxing, Ontologies of Matter

A few streets away, at XYZ Gallery, the scenography relied on more austere forms, more severe compositions. And on one wall, a sentence made me pause: “To understand art, listen to the wind.”

“To understand art, listen to the wind”, Fan Xueyi

Few words, yet so much clarity. After all, visual art does not need endless explanations. It speaks first to the senses, to the part of us that feels before it understands.

Between the two lies perhaps the paradox of contemporary art itself: the desire to speak to the world, but sometimes getting lost in the words.