Galerie Kitsuné | Exhibition calendar – on view | Lin Zhipeng

JANUARY 5 - JANUARY 29

We have no purity in the dark, an exhibition by Lin Zhipeng

Galerie Kitsuné is pleased to present ‘We have no purity in the dark’, an exhibition by Beijing based artist Lin Zhipeng.

For his first solo exhibition with Galerie Kitsuné Kitsuné Gallery in New York, Lin Zhipeng presents with Jérôme Sans, curator of the exhibition, a selection of 37 photographs realized between 2010 and 2022 that pursue his interrogations of Chinese youth in all its complexity: the dynamism and vulnerability of counter-cultures in facing the power of traditional conservatism, rooted in the universal experiences of love, solitude, joy or melancholy.

With Lin Zhipeng, everything is tinged with a resolutely pop seduction. The colour, the shapes, the textures, the framing used are all symptomatic of a visual culture rocked by the flow of images, bodies and symbols that have marked our entry into the second millennium. Far from the traditional and unconstructive criticism of an ‘overconsumption’ or ‘saturation’ of images, those of the artist celebrate the vitality of his generation, starting with the staging of his life and that of his entourage. Mixing love and chaos, fantasy and eroticism, his photographs act as the collective poetic diary of a generation eager to escape social pressures and to aspire to the pleasures of life in a society that is as indifferent as it is rapidly evolving.

‘Feed’ in perpetual mutation sometimes documentary, fictional or conceptual, the photographs of the artist pose recurring elements of a voluntarily eclectic practice: portraits or landscapes with flash, nocturnal and aquatic photographs, nudes, still lives or animals are superimposed, combined or even merged. Whilst the core of his practice remains marked by the nude, both female and male, his recent work shows the development of a pictorial research that explores all forms of life. Human, vegetable, animal or object compose together a philosophy of transposition and empathy. In this sense, the artist states: ‘Humans and all things in the world are equal, and human bodies and natural things are also equal. Just like humans, fruits, flowers, and animals have their own vitality, and they will experience growth and decline until death and disappearance. I hope to compare the vitality of animals and objects to the human body, which possesses certain thoughts and emotions.’ Beyond that of an entire generation, it is vitality as energy or as a fluid reality that the artist captures.

Jérôme Sans

RSVP

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lin Zhipeng, also known as 222, is a leading figure of new Chinese photography emerging in the last decade. In the era of globalization and the Internet, his work was originally popularized through social media and other online platforms as well as his self-published magazines. Lin Zhipeng reflects and defines a certain spirit of the post-80’s and 90’s unconventional Chinese youth. Amidst an otherwise conservative and often closed traditional society and cultural background, Lin Zhipeng’s photographs act as a collective intimate diary of that generation willing to play with the limits of a high-stake society, to which past generations have given shape. His works are saturated with a soft sense of carefreeness, a playful innocence, and a certain optimism amidst a hedonist lifestyle going against the expected pleasures and entrapment of the middle-class dream. His vocabulary while in the vein of Tillmans, Clark, and McGinley remains a unique voice only to himself. Faded flowers entangled in bodies merge with a myriad of motifs from which emanates an emotional ambiguity mixing love and chaos, fantasy and eroticism. Very intimate, his photographs act as poetic diary of that generation wishing to escape social pressures and to aspire to life’s pleasures in an indifferent and ever-changing society.

A Fish Wish

Hahnemuhle Photo Rag-Fine Art (308g)

Archival grade paper

67 x 100cm

Edition of 5

Signed by the artist

Edition 1-3 – $3200

Edition 4-5 – $4800

AP edition – $5600