THE NATURE OF THE INDEFINITE

--How the Seventies Generation Sums up the Experience of Being Alive

Hang Chunxiao

In conceptualizing art of the Seventies generation, popular interpretations fall under the rubrics of “cruel youth” or “cartoon and anime.” But in my view, such explications are too simple, or I should say they don’t touch the heart of things. The phrase “cruel youth” implies an absurd premise: only people who have been through social upheavals can have an in-depth grasp of society; otherwise one merely enters into fragmentary experiences of their own realm. Maybe artists of the Seventies generation did not live through the kind of intense impacts that their predecessors did, but in their seemingly placid lives they dealt with indefinite circumstances of existence, which gave them chances to take stock of life rationally, and to reflect skeptically on fixed value judgments about life. This is nothing like the narcissism that supposedly comes from suffering a “superficial injury.” 

One could say that the 70s generation, finding itself in an indefinite world, is searching for a path toward a definite vision of the world. Drawing on representative works by different types of 70s generation artists, this exhibition aims to present and explore artistic features that set this group off from previous generations.