Curator: Yang Zi

Duration: 2026.10.1–2027.3.14

In the exhibition, Shi Guowei combines photography and painting in an attempt to recreate three-dimensional memories through two-dimensional images. Festivals exist at the intersection of personal emotions and collective consciousness, layered upon one another, and can trigger physical sensations—which is also the texture of memory.

It is precisely through long-term observation of such cultural-psychological mechanisms — combined with his own memories and visual imagination, and informed by a meticulous capture of the hidden moments within China’s urban and rural festivals and everyday life — that Shi Guowei attempts to evoke and recreate a highly charged psychological state in his new body of work. It is a state of contradiction: depression and euphoria tightly interlocked, emotions tearing against each other while pulling in opposite directions. Beneath the surface of revelry often lies a hidden, restrained solitude, while within quiet scenes, uncontrollable impulses surge. The artist does not depict the festival itself directly. Instead, through dislocations and conflicts of color, texture, and composition, he condenses these opposing emotions into a visualizable psychological tableau.