Over the past six months, I visited the U.S. for the first time. When I lived there, the fierceness and chaos of New York undoubtedly inspired many of my imaginations. In my past creation, I always witness human beings’ abuse of matters from changing events in life, which triggers my curiosity and observation of such mild things. New York is particularly a modern city of high capital development, and everywhere is mixed with destruction and regeneration and conflicts between humanity and material every day. As a foreign creator, I’ve explored a lot from the images in life and breakage of content meanings. To me, New York subway is the entrance to this city of madness, and only one city can be so crazy. The best, the ugliest, the most passionate, and the most indifferent all are mixed in this city. New York is similar to a thin membrane challenging the extremity of humanity in either “heaven” or “hell.” At present, it is a human world.

“Upside Down” personal exhibition is originated from my creative imaginations about the chaotic New York City. In this exhibition, “Upside Down” is the binary basis of cognitive logics of rational perception. The “appearance of Upside Down” reflects the visual outline of recessive meanings. The two sets of site specific installation on display are: “Untitled 2016” and “Untitled Room 3”, used materials rich in collective memories, such as artificial plastic, liquid, fabric, and printing paper, as the multiple metaphors of life. The shapes of concave and convex, emptiness, aggregation, and escape create a “special time and space” that are different from those in daily life, which triggers the senses of entanglement and rejection of audiences. In addition, material combination and actions are used to form the abstract performance of low regulated substances. The works not only reflect the imagination outline of material alienation, but also connect the residues. The creative approach of coexistence of a large amount of construction and destruction introduces meaning emptying and speed converted visual perception to audiences. The mixture of shapes and meanings triggers audiences’ hidden perception energy, and creates a pure life poetic realm. The works reflect the “pure” material world with which we all are familiar but always ignore. Even though audiences put themselves in the exhibition site, their thoughts may be outside images.

There are many clear but difficult to define borders hidden in our life. My creations are developed on this basis. I use residual life fragments to outline the border of upside down or even two faces of an object. During this development, as an installation artist, I repeatedly explore the qualitative meanings of “artistic value” and “meaning value,” which leads to the formation of many hidden borders from personal narratives to group awareness in identity, events (objects), and time and place, as well as the construction of mystic poetic freedom in this disguised and absurd life.

I remember that when I arrived in New York in early April, it was the season of late winter and early spring. One day, a strong wind blew away the garbage on the street. When these lost materials became the slowly moving floating substances, the twigs of trees were scattered with wastes. Such intertwining of disordered time and space created a different kind of humor and absurdity. This scene simulated my life gesture in art, and reminded me of my dramatic imagination about the film “American Beauty” (1999). After all these years, I sensed my own affective projects right now right here in this script that seems to be a soap opera. I read the classic lines in the play:

I always heard the entire life flashes from your eyes
in a second before you die
First of all, that one second isn't a second at all,
It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time

For me, it was lying on my bag, a boys' scout camp, watching falling stars
and yellow leaves from the maple trees that lie under street
Or my grandmother's hands, and they wear skin, seemed like paper
and the first time i saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird
and Jenny…
and Carolyn

I guess I could be pretty pissed off of what happened to me
But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world
Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much
My heart feels like a balloon, it's about to burst

And I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it
And that flows through me like rain
and I can't feel anything but gratitude
for every single moment of my stupid little life
you have no idea what I'm talking about I'm sure
but don't worry, you will someday

Sometimes, imaginations are more authentic than reality. Lies of people may be more dreadful than reality. Haruki Murakami once said: “There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair…”(Hear the Wind Sing, 1979), there are too much unexpected things in the world in front of me. They all may be the accidents that I pursue. Apparently, there are accidents everywhere …