Overlap and Fissure
article: Liu Yunfeng
The exhibition takes “Reconstruction” as its central theme, exploring how different artistic practices reinterpret matter, media, and states of existence. Artists Meng Deyu, Stefano Galli, and Sun Yu each approach the notion of “reconstruction” through three distinct dimensions — the material, the digital- traditional tension, and the performative-ritualistic — engaging in profound reflections on transformation and meaning.
Meng Deyu constructs a recording system based on material change through repetitive actions of covering, scraping, and depositing. His process reveals the accumulation of traces and the transformation of forms through time. These works not only objectively record the physical alteration of materials, but also form a temporal visual coating—each layer becomes both the trace of the artist’s decision-making and a record of inter-material reactions. This method embeds modes of thought, material memory, and emotional resonance into layered textures, transforming painting into an integrated medium that combines materiality, temporality, and subjectivity. As philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of the “trace” suggests, Meng’s acts of covering and erasure generate an irreducibleotherness between destruction and regeneration. His dialectic of deconstruction and fusion produces a material archive that transcends artistic intention, revealing the philosophical potential of artistic creation.
Stefano Galli’s practice centers on the confrontation between digital media and traditional painting. His works often subvert the original intent of an image, with forms tending toward minimalism and stylization. His long-term engagement with digital painting prompts him to question the boundaries between interface and brushstroke, virtual and material. By reinterpreting digitally generated doodles as oil paintings, he achieves a cross-media reconstruction while offering a critical reflection on technology’s role in shaping visual production. Stefano explores the relationship between technology and society through paintings of natural landscapes juxtaposed with elements of the digital world. The contrast between the jungle—a metaphor for nature—and the mobile phone, a digital medium deeply integrated into human life and perception, creates a dialogue between two visual systems. Through the translation between digital graffiti and oil painting, he interrogates the essence of the medium, allowing two pictorial languages—born of different needs yet belonging to the same field—to intertwine.
Sun Yu’s performative practice can be examined within a dialogue between Eastern philosophy and Western Action Theory. His performances are framed by the Buddhist concept of the four phases— formation, existence, decay, and emptiness—and construct a cyclical and ritualistic spatial narrative. Echoing Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s notion of potentiality—the interrelation of resistance and creation—Sun Yu translates conceptual ideas into embodied physical acts through building, dwelling, destroying, and collecting fragments. His works establish a dynamic balance between destruction and reconstruction, order and chaos, thereby endowing “reconstruction” with a cosmological and cyclical dimension rooted in Eastern thought.
Through these three distinct trajectories, the exhibition collectively forms a site of “reconstruction” that traverses matter, media, concept, and action. It stimulates reflection on the fluidity of existence and the essence of creation. Beyond presenting individual artistic practices, the exhibition constructs a field of reconstruction—from material layers to technological interfaces, from ritualized actions to philosophical inquiry—transforming artistic gestures into speculative language. In doing so, it responds to the multiplicity of meanings embedded in “reconstruction” as a key proposition in contemporary art.
