Bridge Projects is pleased to announce A Composite Leviathan, a two-part exhibition of emerging Chinese artists opening September 12, 2020.
Curated by James Elaine, founder of Telescope, a non-profit art space in Beijing and former curator of Hammer Projects in Los Angeles and the Drawing Center in New York, A Composite Leviathan features twenty contemporary artists from China: Deng Tai, Fan Xi, Stephen Gleadow, He Wei, Jiu Jiu, Li Ran, Li Zhenwei, Liu Dongxu, Liu Fujie, Lyu Zhiqiang, Nabuqi, Wu Di, Xie Hongdong, Yang Jian, Ye Su, Zeng Hong, Zhang Miao, Zhang Ruyi, Zhang Xinjun, and Zhao Yang.
Named after Yang Jian’s monumental sculpture, the show’s title also references the Book of Job’s “leviathan”—a sea dragon evoking the threat of chaos against order—and Thomas Hobbes’ political treatise of the same name. An iteration of the exhibition was first presented at Luhring Augustine Bushwick from October 11, 2019 to February 1, 2020 and featured twelve emerging Chinese artists. In its Los Angeles iteration, the show expands with fresh examples of contemporary art in China. In A Composite Leviathan, each work emerges from the complex fissures of the artists’ own lived realities, both spiritual and political.
The exhibition will be presented in two distinct chapters. All 20 artists will be on view from September 12 to December 5, 2020. The second chapter from January 8 to February 27, 2021 will be anchored around a large installation by Zhang Xinjun titled Green Hole, a sprawling sculpture constructed of common materials from Chinese construction sites and rural markets.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen, from “Anthem”
In the Bible, Leviathan is a dark creature of immense size which rises out of the sea and cannot be subdued by mere humans alone. “Leviathan” can also refer to anything of enormous proportions and formidable power, such as international corporations or totalitarian states and their vast bureaucracies. In artist Yang Jian’s sculpture A Composite Leviathan, which inspired the exhibition’s title, we see a relic of an intimidating yet tottering state system. The monumental piece is composed of distinct elements sourced from disparate public sculptures and spaces. It is a jigsaw puzzle of incongruous components that don’t fit together quite right but beautifully reveal the twisted metal structure within. These cracks in the armor represent the lines that have drawn this exhibition together. The focus of the show is not political, thematic, religious, or stylistic; rather, it showcases a community of dispersed artists, living in a conflicting system of flux and control, who are drawing the lines that let the light in.
—James Elaine, Curator, A Composite Leviathan