No theory of painting is possible without conversation with artists.  

Vitalisms is an exhibition-as-experiment initiating a long-term research and education project on the "historicity" and "value" of contemporary painting in China.  We begin our research by gathering a group of artists, born in the 1980s and 90s in China and mostly educated in Chinese art academies, and by focusing on figurative paintings made in the past five years (i.e., since 2020).  We experiment with their presentation in a shared space and time, to ask: 

How are they situated in history?  What could they tell us about the time and place in which they were made?  Could we anticipate their historicization as documents of personal and/or collective memory in the future?  In what ways could they become a counter-hegemonic archive? 

Vitalisms is an exhibition-as-experiment because it does not present completed research, rather the exhibition initiates conversations with Vitalisms artists to discuss their paintings and these questions. Our conversations will be developed into a prospective publication.

Join us for this opportunity to learn about how artists think, talk, and feel about painting.

Schedule of conversations:

Saturdays, 15:30

12 April     Gao Xiaoyi
19 April      Xie Lingrou
26 April      Li Ran
17 May       Cao Xiang
24 May      Cui Jie
31 May       Zheng Zhilin
7 June        Cai Zebin

Chinese; English interpretation available upon request.

Free and open to the public. 

No registration required.

In conjunction with Vitalisms, an exhibition by CAO Zebin, CAO Xiang, CUI Jie, GAO Xiaoyi, LI Ran, XIE Lingrou, and ZHENG Zhilin.

The exhibition Vitalisms and related events are presented as the second season of the ICA's artistic research program Lightless Fires (2024–26), exploring fermentation as a figure and technique of collective memory, autonomous archiving, and writing history.