BAProject Art Space, Shenzhen, China, July04- Julu30, 2023
Fengfeng Solo Exhibition

If we compare art to the language of communication, it is like the language used by lions or tigers, like "ow" or "ow"; if we compare it to the body movements, it might be like crawling on all fours, applying organs and bodies like cats and dogs.

Fengfeng has been trying to engage in non-signifying and non-subjective art practice. He brings readymade objects as the main creative material. He attempts to reproduce these materials in his artistic practice, freeing them from the regime of signs and its semiotic system. The artist attempts to create true multiplicities by forming the material-particles set in motion with a freed trait of landscapity, pictoriality, or musicality.

Fengfeng's "IKEA Products" series began in 2023. IKEA is the most iconic industry subscribed to segmented structure. All furniture is delivered in parts, then installed with instructions by customers. This process is taken place at the bottom of its linear segmentarity, yet it is simultaneously the most segmented and centralized. "Butterfly" is the first piece of Fengfeng's "IKEA Products" series. The artist mixed parts from various pieces of furniture (beds, hangers, carts, chairs, etc.), then improvised to reshape and reassemble them. It is similar to recombining established notes into different scores and improvising them.

If one approaches Fengfeng's work with a preconceived notion and preconception of "furniture," one might not be able to comprehend it immediately. When the artist breaks the internal structure of the ready-made objects in a more improvised, intuitive, and disorderly way, the content and expression of the materials have been reconstructed, which is already a different territory with its new landscapity. From Fengfeng's perspective, how do you enter this reconstructed field without encountering its significance and subject? Could it possibly be just through "rhythm"? Or "topography"? Or even the imperceptible elevation, density, and salinity?

What is certain is that behind those possibilities of the chaotics, the artist has made a break from the orderly reality and the established logic. Let's call this bold attempt a home party.

Imaginary Z, Hangzhou, China. Nov25-Dec25, 2023
Artists: Fengfeng, Shao Yixiao
Curator: J.T.

I was chatting with a friend before, and he said that his ability is "perception" because every time he guesses other people's star signs right. He asked me what my ability was; I said, "Coincidence." There are countless coincidences in my life, from childhood to adulthood, no matter where I am, and I'm more and more aware of the importance of this matter to myself. My recent experiences with it made my heart beat faster, and I couldn't say a word to express it. When looking back, I seemed to perceive my existence at that moment.

Starting to make heart shapes has a lot to do with coincidences. I keep encountering heart shapes, especially in the past two years. Once, on a business trip with my colleagues, we saw heart shapes everywhere in the city. However, one of my colleagues said he had never seen these when he came here last month. Over the past two years, I have also made some heart-shaped works. Sometimes, I wanted to make something, and I made it heart-shaped for no reason. And I feel this shape suits me well.

Three Shadows Photography Art Center 3.0 Space, Beijing, China. Apr09- Apr19, 2022
Artists: Fengfeng, Kuan Gui
Curator: Zachariah Zhou

The distinction to be made is not at all between exterior and interior, which are always relative, changing, and reversible, but between different types of multiplicities that coexist, interpenetrate, and change places- machines, cogs, motors, and elements that are set in motion at a given moment, forming an assemblage productive of statements: “I love you”(or whatever)

The title of the exhibition, "I love you (or whatever)," comes from a passage in A Thousand Plateaus in which Deleuze and Guattari describe the concept of "Assemblage." "Assemblage" is the central antithetical subject of this exhibition.

"Assemblage" means, by definition, "many," e.g., four people are an assemblage, five mediums are an assemblage. In short, the world is a network of innumerable assemblages linked together, each with its multiplicities and its collective unconscious. The concept of assemblage, in particular, emphasizes the fact that within a series, its internal compositional relations are never stable and constant; on the contrary, each of its internal components can be replaced by the internal components of other systems. This is what Deleuze and Guattari mean by the nature of exogenous connections of things. In these unceasing movements and changes, assemblages interpenetrate and form a productive statement at a particular moment in time. And, all statements are the product of a mechanistic configuration of an assemblage, i.e., the agent of a collective elaboration.

"Each of us is caught up in an assemblage of this kind, and we reproduce its statements when we think we are speaking in our name; or rather we speak in our name when we produce its statement." This exhibition is a productive statement. In fact, any exhibition is a productive statement and never needs a specific subject of enunciation. In a fluid social structure, the very meaning of the exhibition is to uncover plurality and question any will with personality. The artistic practice of the two artists as a dangerous collection (human, social, and technical machines, organized molar machines; molecular machines with their particles of becoming- inhuman; Oedipal apparatuses; and counter-Oedipal apparatuses, variable in aspect and functioning) adds to the logic of semantics the data feeling of the aliquid. It gets entangled in the spring of Beijing, in this space, and then deterritorializes and thus becomes, by accident, this romantic or cruel statement: I love you (or whatever).