Language
Single Layer Ink No.1
Chen Xi
This space presents works by Beijing-based artist Chen Xi, who explores the intersection of traditional ink painting and contemporary technology through experimental paintings and video. Her practice examines the shifting boundaries of perception, materiality, and representation in the digital age.
The exhibition features two bodies of work: a series of ink-and-mineral-pigment paintings and a single-channel experimental video, Sleepwalking Through a Walking Simulator.
The painting series, Free Science Fiction, is composed of repeating lines and geometric forms that evoke urban maps, circuit diagrams, and biological networks. The spreading ink and mineral pigments generate complex, layered patterns that visualize a dual structure—between nature and artifice, emotion and machine, chaos and control. These works open up new possibilities for what Chen calls “mechanical abstraction” in ink-based media.
In Monochrome Ink No. 1, traditional notions of void and dispersion in East Asian painting are reimagined through the visual logic of gene sequences or data maps. Fluorescent pigments combined with ink produce a hybrid sensibility—bridging Eastern aesthetics and technological visualization. The result is a sensory encounter with the hybridization of civilizations, a proposal for how ink painting might evolve in the age of information.
The video work blends drawing, 2D and 3D animation, and digital mapping into a nonlinear dreamscape. Chen invites viewers into a drifting, introspective journey through themes of memory, growth, and identity. It is a hallucinatory simulation of becoming—part narrative, part spatial experience.
Chen Xi’s work resonates deeply with the theme of this Biennale, Neighbors of Civilization. By merging the aesthetics of classical ink with contemporary digital logic, she tests the fluidity of Asian identity and opens up a speculative terrain for ink beyond ink—across machines, languages, and sensoriums.
In this space where painting meets video, machine meets feeling,
viewers are invited to pass through one civilization,
and arrive at another possibility of sensing.
The exhibition features two bodies of work: a series of ink-and-mineral-pigment paintings and a single-channel experimental video, Sleepwalking Through a Walking Simulator.
The painting series, Free Science Fiction, is composed of repeating lines and geometric forms that evoke urban maps, circuit diagrams, and biological networks. The spreading ink and mineral pigments generate complex, layered patterns that visualize a dual structure—between nature and artifice, emotion and machine, chaos and control. These works open up new possibilities for what Chen calls “mechanical abstraction” in ink-based media.
In Monochrome Ink No. 1, traditional notions of void and dispersion in East Asian painting are reimagined through the visual logic of gene sequences or data maps. Fluorescent pigments combined with ink produce a hybrid sensibility—bridging Eastern aesthetics and technological visualization. The result is a sensory encounter with the hybridization of civilizations, a proposal for how ink painting might evolve in the age of information.
The video work blends drawing, 2D and 3D animation, and digital mapping into a nonlinear dreamscape. Chen invites viewers into a drifting, introspective journey through themes of memory, growth, and identity. It is a hallucinatory simulation of becoming—part narrative, part spatial experience.
Chen Xi’s work resonates deeply with the theme of this Biennale, Neighbors of Civilization. By merging the aesthetics of classical ink with contemporary digital logic, she tests the fluidity of Asian identity and opens up a speculative terrain for ink beyond ink—across machines, languages, and sensoriums.
In this space where painting meets video, machine meets feeling,
viewers are invited to pass through one civilization,
and arrive at another possibility of sensing.