From September 1 to 28, 2012, presented by the Today Art Museum in association with the Institute for the Advancement of 21st Century Art, the “Spin: the First Decade of the New Century” exhibition, organized by renowned curator Zhang Qing, shall be on display at the Second Floor Exhibition Hall of Today Art Museum’s Building One. The exhibition brings together new works of the past ten years of six artists whose rise coincided with that of the new century- Chen Ke, Jia Aili, Ouyang Chun, Qiu Xiaofei, Wang Guangle and Wei Jia, and shall include both classic works from their illustrious careers as well as the newest pieces of the current year.

As introduced by curator Zhang Qing, “the distinguishing characteristics of the artists born in this decade are as diverse and varied as the radical changes that took place during it. Their works are historical reflections, social critiques, the conceptual wanderings and cultural hesitations of an era’s or an individual’s transformations; or, they are the secrets of an artist’s own personal growth, taken to form the light, soft visual aesthetic of a new generation. Of course, the cultural trends and tendencies shared among these different possibilities are not rigid and invariable, but rather free-flowing and mutually permeable.

This exhibition brings together a group of artists born in the 1970’s whose works display an individualized sensitivity and realism within the cultural framework of an era, as they express their unique worldviews from the heart. They are a particular and unique historical convergence: bodies spinning on their own axes at a point where the age of consumption comes into fierce collision with ideology. The entire exhibition is devoted to the spinning structures, spinning expressions, and spinning stages of these artists and their world. Even if there were no direct relationship shared among them, their works, now featured together, form an explicit manifesto of the progress and development of art in the first decade of the new century, and reveal their outward, spinning blossoming into the artists they have become today. In this way, the exhibition becomes an academic experience for participating artists; “Spin: the First Decade of the New Century” and the unique approaches to life and self-expression that distinguish the artists within it provide both a blueprint for and a cross-section of history. ”