Geng Yini: Perfect Duck Deep Pond: chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, China

Hanging Tower & Perfect Duck Deep Pond is Geng Yini’s latest exhibition featuring creations from 2017 as well as a selection of ear- lier works. If Geng’s past works could be described as psychotic carnivals of global culture, then this exhibition is a valiant adven- ture in reconciling the essence of traditional Chinese culture with the artist’s surrealistic tendencies.

In the Chinese title “Hanging Tower” refers to the kungfu kata - attack quickly; destroy the opponent’s central strength and fall him. Deep Pond Perfect Duck is the title of painting in which a gigantic duck, framed between two distant mountains, peacefully floats on a pond. For Geng, Hanging Tower represents the skillful grace of tradition, and its ability to persevere through the onslaught of change, while the ‘perfect duck’ alludes to youthful aspirations for an ideal life far from the reaches of reality. Geng’s shift of focus from international themes to traditional Chinese culture is rather recent, yet both have been informed by her long-term residence in the industrialized, yet peripheral, Northeastern city of Shenyang. Geng applies a peculiar curiosity of the world to real-life elements of her surroundings, creating a colorful, extreme, yet absurd pictorial language. Throughout the show a number of old sayings and folk wisdoms appear scribbled, graffiti-style, over the artist’s eclectic images. These thought-provoking proverbs eloquently evoke everyday and down-to-earth beauty while the correlated images often confound them. “Hanging Tower” is placed alongside “Perfect Duck Deep Pond”, but the two remain distinctly independent. Such harmony and stark disunity are the very essence of this exhibi- tion. Reality vs. fiction, tradition vs.innovation - these inner tensions are the hidden features of the works on display. “The two titular terms together embody connection and contradiction,” Geng Yini explained. “The theme of the exhibition comes from my work, and my work is derived from my life. This exhibition reflects my true feelings which stem from my social environment.”