The first floor of Hunsand Space (Beijing) will host Jin Ya'nan’s solo exhibition, Touch, Cut, Construct, opening on December 21, 2024. Featuring over a dozen of the artist's sculptures, this exhibition serves as a concise overview of his creative practice spanning several years.
Jin Ya'nan received extensive formal training in sculptural modeling at the Sculpture Department of the China Academy of Art. For him, sculpture is a material form that mediates between history and reality, acting as a portrait of societal systems. In his work, sculpture functions as a method of creation, a means of occupation, and a device for dialogue.
In this exhibition, Jin Ya'nan condenses his creative process into three actions: Touch, Cut, Construct. “Touching is prolonged and gentle, evoking a sublime transformation of images. Cutting is a brief act of violence, creating a distortion of the everyday. Constructing becomes the staging of a temporary performance, turning a space into a frenzied altar: southern fruits, northern air, crises on all sides, severed limbs, and the body of a guitar.”
Like a long-lasting movement, Jin Ya'nan uses these three actions to respond to the enduring art of sculpture: gazing, clashing, rebuilding. The act of smoothing seems reductive but simultaneously layers traces. It appears gentle, yet it erases the solid; it seems like a tribute, but it devours its subject. As the image recedes, the vitality of the object comes to the fore. Everyday objects, through a shift in conceptual perspective, are severed from their inherent functions ("objecthood") and transformed into subjects of observation. What is cut is not just the object itself, but also the mechanisms by which the world operates. The old order dissolves; fragmented pieces regenerate independently. Performances, revelries, ascents, or descents emerge, guided by a tenuous belief.
Touch, Cut, Construct also serves as an inquiry into the process of sculpture itself. The shaping of form, the intensification of material textures, and the tactile control over surfaces—these objective considerations of the artwork’s essence imbue Jin Ya’nan's creations with a quiet yet enduring tension.
