Vitalisms II is an exhibition-as-experiment that continues a long-term research and education project on contemporary painting in China. Following the first chapter’s inquiry into the historicity of painting, we now turn toward a different question: How does value come into being through our encounters with painting?

As the opening season of our new artistic research program Untimely Inheritances (2026–28), Vitalisms II considers inheritance as a condition we inhabit and reinterpret. Within the financial imagination, value is rendered calculable, comparable, and exchangeable. Yet value can also name artistic, historical, social, institutional, and affective relations. What happens when a painting is encountered as an artwork, cultural artifact, collectible object, commodity, or financial asset?

Vitalisms II focuses on abstract and non-representational painting, a field whose boundaries remain uncertain. The exhibition brings together practices ranging from conceptually driven, hard-edged geometric painting to more intuitive and expressive approaches, including works that approach the threshold of representation. How might abstraction reveal, rather than obscure, relations that are otherwise difficult to perceive? How might we keep interpretation open, rather than seeking settlement? And what might speculation come to mean as a practice of imagining otherwise, rather than predicting return?

The title Vitalisms draws from Isabelle Graw’s account of painting’s “vitalistic fantasies”—how vitality and agency have been projected onto painting. *Vitalisms I asked whether we could extend these fantasies and think of paintings as active participants in the historical and social relations through which they are made, encountered, and circulated. Vitalisms II asks: What might happen when we approach a painting not simply as an image to be interpreted, but as something with which we enter into relation?

Like the first Vitalisms, this chapter is conceived as an experiment in which knowledge is exchanged and produced throughout the exhibition. During weekly study sessions, we spend extended time with the paintings, developing interpretations collectively through close looking, discussion, and reflection. These encounters become part of the exhibition’s research, inviting us to ask: What might we come to value—and, in turn, make possible?

* Isabelle Graw, The Love of Painting (Sternberg Press, 2018): 21-24.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vitalisms II is accompanied by related events, including:

OPENING RECEPTION

• • Friday, 18 September, 16:00–19:00

A public reception to celebrate the exhibition’s opening with food and drinks.

STUDY SESSION
Form & Content II: How Do We Value Painting(s)?

• • Fridays, 13:00–14:00 (English) / 16:00–17:00 PM (Chinese)
  • 9, 16, 23, 30 October
  • 6, 13, 20 November

For the artwork featured in each session and the full schedule, please visit the event webpage.

A weekly series of Study Sessions facilitated by ICA curators using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). Each one-hour session focuses on a single painting, inviting participants to spend time looking and sharing their observations and interpretations through conversation. The sessions bring the public into Vitalisms II’s research into how value comes into being through our encounters with painting. No prior knowledge of art or the exhibition is required.

ROUNDTABLE
After Looking: What Does Looking Have to Do with Value?

• • Saturday, 5 December, 13:30-17:00

A roundtable bringing together the artists exhibiting in Vitalisms II and the ICA curators who facilitated the exhibition’s Study Sessions. Over seven weeks, the public spent sustained time with individual paintings through close looking and group discussion. From these sessions, the curators will bring selected observations, interpretations, and questions into conversation with the artists, exploring how paintings acquire meaning and value through different encounters.

All events are FREE and OPEN to the public.
For further details and to register for events, please visit the event pages under Related programs below.

The exhibition Vitalisms II and related events are presented as the first season of the ICA’s artistic research program Untimely Inheritances (2026–28), attending to what inheritance asks of us and how we might inhabit unfinished worlds through practices of interpretation, response, and transformation.

Vitalisms II is organized by Michelle Yeonho Hyun with BAO Yang and CHEN Baichao, with additional support by HOU Chuchu, QU Yanqiu and JIAO Meiqi. Special thanks to Arts & Collections Foundation, Luoying Sheng, Han Xiao, and Chong Zhou for their generosity, as well as Antenna Space, CLC Gallery, Magician Space, Ota Fine Arts, ShanghART Gallery and ZIAN Gallery, for their support. Graphic Design by LIU Anqi. Exhibition Design by FANG Yuan.

Our deepest gratitude belongs to the artists for sharing their knowledge, work, and time with us, extending our curiosity and creating more questions.

Early research and development for Untimely Inheritances received kind support from Goethe-Institut, as well as research assistance from Oviya Dinakhar, Fay Guan, and Lizzy Xie.