The Joy of Shipwrecks

2023.4.29 - 2023.6.11

Venue: D06, Middle 2nd St., 798 Art Zone, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, BJ

Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:30-18:30

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Tong Gallery+Projects is honored to announce that the solo exhibition of artist MENG DEYU The Joy of Shipwrecks will be open from April 29th (Sat), 2023 to June 11th (Sun), 2023, during which the artist's latest paintings will be presented. Look forward to seeing you there!

Shipwreck should have been an unfortunate event. The process of the shipwrecking was terrifying, and the contents of the boat fell into the water one after another. Everything of a person sink to the bottom of the sea in an instant, leaving only one life. But under the pen of Ungaretti, the sailor who has lost everything calls the capsize a "joy": the journey is about to begin/restart. This subtle change of the mood may be synonymous with Meng Deyu's creation. In the past two years, he described himself as being constantly pushed and pulled by hope and disappointment: "It's like a boat floating on a deep water, the kind of happiness of being capsizing and can be reversible at any time." 

This exhibition continues Meng Deyu's exploration of the boundary between rationality and the unknown at the philosophical level. Italian mythology and poetry had a particularly deep influence on him. The nine consecutive oil paintings created in the early years and the newly cast bronze sculpture group this year are all behind Dante's "Divine Comedy", discussing body and soul, death and rebirth. As Meng Deyu said, he was obsessed with thinking about "predicted dangers, lost emotions, blurred images and the contradiction of realities". This complex tension is also where the drama and anxiety exist in his works.