UCCA Beijing

Ji Dachun: Without a Home

2014.1.19 - 2014.5.11

2013

Acrylic on canvas

120 x 110 cm

Courtesy the artist

About

Location:  Nave and Long Gallery

The painter Ji Dachun (b. 1968) is best-known for his surrealist, satirical critiques of contemporary China. "Ji Dachun: Without a Home" spans several key moments in the artist's prodigious career and includes a new suite of works made specifically for this exhibition. With some 40 works realized in the past decade, the show also marks the artist's first institutional exhibition in Beijing and the most comprehensive look at his mature practice to date. Since he started showing in the mid-1990s, Ji's painting has alternated between a wry figurative mode and an aesthetic characterized by abstract quasi-landscapes and still lifes. In his earlier works, Ji depicts historical figures, cartoonish animals, children's toys, and everyday objects against stark white backgrounds. These familiar objects and figures are marked by bizarre visual non-sequiturs and juxtapositions, resulting in humorous, otherworldly scenes: cryptic caricatures, cartoonish perversity, and variously macabre, trenchant, and grotesque overtones. The animation cel-like images seem ineffably familiar yet inexorably estranged, resisting conventional interpretation.

For more information, please read the "Ji Dachun: Without a Home" press release.

Works in the exhibition

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Intertwined

2013

Acrylic on canvas
120 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Outline

2013

Acrylic on canvas
130 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

The Hunter Forgets

2013

Acrylic on canvas
152 x 126.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Midical Landscape

2011

acrylic on canvas
150 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Not Much Good Water

2013

acrylic on canvas
120 x 115 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Cinderella

2011

acrylic on canvas
150 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Cloud

2011

acrylic on canvas
30 x 20 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Dirty Water

2008

acrylic on canvas
110 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Fire of Richter

2008

acrylic on canvas
30 x 25 cm
Courtesy of the artist

A Pond of Sharks

2009

acrylic on canvas
20 x 30 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Bird Painting without Bird

2008

acrylic on canvas
140 x 140 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Black Is a Rectangle

2013

acrylic on canvas
152 x 126.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist

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Installation Views

Installation Views

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