When we study an artist’s creative work to be attracted by her thought, we can not help but advance along an unfamiliar path with some excitement, sometimes a troubled excitement, though. Nevertheless, I see how important art is for our life today, and the mutual exchange and mutual inspiration of an artistic creation itself is a matter worthy of effort. In 2010, owing to the artistic contents I have been involved in, I clearly understand that almost every work of art that is worthy of study is a sustenance and continuation of the artist’s dream, while this dream allows everyone who is related with it to experience one after another possibility in our life. And what’s more, it foretells things that will be budding in Chinese culture. That is why I have been waiting for Cui Xiuwen’s latest creation with great expectations. In other words, how Cui has undergone a transformation from individual situation questioning to individual existence spiritual reading, which in itself represents a certain turn of the contemporary Chinese art in this particular situation and times, which is moving away from its inertial track to restore in essence to a time that an artist depends on her own way of thinking and truly goes into a more in-depth creative process and creative thinking.
From the end of 2009 when the artist attempted to regain those cultural objectives that have been gradually forgotten in our spiritual home, her vedio work “Emptiness in Non-emptiness & Being in Non-being” seems to be the starting point for her to rediscover art creation. This vedio implies an ultimate interdependent relationship in life journey with life entity and hypothetical carrier of spirit (doll), which provides a basis for her meditation in the vedio. Simutaneously, she regards the media as channels of communication to reflect the real needs of people by linking two points, which further proves that the artist deliberately frees her own creative ideas from limitations of social forms and from our reliance on common sense so as to emphasize the visual transmission of thought. In 2010, Cui hopes to go further beyond herself and step into a mental state of self-forgetfulness to remove all kinds of redundant components with nothingness of scene, nothingness of form and nothingness of media to correspond to her recent artistic imagination.
She has spent a whole year on her new work of art “Domain of God”, the aim of which is to snapshot concept or thought in her work, to restore it to the media’s natural attribute. Whether they are hers or related objects’, the slowly rising bodies just serve as reasons for her statement on thinking ----- Cui has realized that there is something more apparent than real prevailing between our daily life and the present artistic expression, so she devotes herself to depict the serious position of art by emphasizing the spiritual world. Such an effort appears to be abstract, or a hardly attainable goal, but her passion and quest make us feel a kind of new thinking in Chinese contemporary art and a trend away from the past.
By Yu Ke

Cui Xiuwen pays close attention to all kinds of states of human under different situations and sincerely faces the reality and the life directly. With her own personal experiences and by the artistic angle of view, she observes, describes and glances back the existence of human. However, she doesn’t satisfy with the description to the presentation of things and the simple discussion on these scenes, while she consciously exceeds the regional characteristics to conduct deeper philosophical thoughts. In her works, her thoughts seem to leap up suddenly and look down to the land from above. During the process of artistic thoughts, the artist gains extreme deep inward experiences and inspiration to the life.
A large number of video works in this exhibition show human get free from the chaos, which presents the complete real state of human. In music, the people slowly twist their bodies and don’t behave in an affected way at all. Just like the fairies, they lead the audience to the new free space by their personal life experiences. Although these works have much differences from her former creations on their features, their spirit cores are consistent, that is, they all present the self-observed manners of the artists. In the meditation moving in circles, she makes efforts to create a spirit way which can break through nothingness and tend towards nature; however, this profound and intangible prospect not only comes from the controlling ability of the artist for the atmosphere and color, but expresses the supreme state of her inner feeling.
It seems that the people often forget the essence of art but just stay the noisy phenomenon. Questioning the art closely is because of returning to the art is the natural state of itself, while returning to the natural state of art at the same time means returning to the natural state of human being themselves. We can see that art has completely been the practical way for the abreaction of her emotion and poetic expression for Cui Xiuwen. And she seems to offer us another presentation of modern art pursuing nature and returning to origin.
By Zhang Zikang