Gallery Func is pleased to present"A Fund of Gifts", a duo show by Ding Hongdan and Bo Sihan, curated by Miao Zijin. The reason we are all gathered here today is not to celebrate the staying power of the "From today painting is dead" that has been cited to this day, but rather our continued fascination with the issues of painting that have been raised but not fully exchanged. "A Fund of Gifts", a two-person project by Ding Hongdan and Bo Sihan, will unfold sequentially on the three floors of the house where Gallery Func is located.

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On the first floor, Ding Hongdan has created a theater with an absurd atmosphere and intertwined time and space. The dull Barbie dolls and little boys are like muppets manipulated by the artist; the gaze of hipster and female singer looking into the distance is full of their fantasies of the future. The saturated colors and crude silhouettes, deliberately chosen by theartist, generate a powerful visual impact, implying a violence hidden in the feminine sense of humor. In the series paintings, such as Boy with Milk Can I and Boy with Milk Can II, the portraits are being manipulated and dragged by the artist's hand and Photoshop at the same time; while YYDS or Girl Gunner create tension through composition and narrative.

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Bo Sihan has built a meditative space for a dialogue with the journey of the past on the second floor. In contrast to the irony and disorientation of the characters portrayed by Ding, Bo attempts to orchestrate the personal memories embedded in her paintings with a relatively calm and light approach. Raindrops and starry sky are the elements that appear many times in her journey and works, reflecting the subtle and self-contained inner world. The mixed media such as plaster and acrylic panels manifest the artist’s endeavor to escape from the limitations of the plane and frame of painting, serving as a temporary proof of her distance from the overly familiar and boring reality.

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Entering the third floor, the reception room of Gallery Func is transformed into an open archival chamber, where visitors are encouraged to take away a readable part of the exhibition: a paperapple containing a confession of the art-making process. Two artists participating in "A Fund of Gifts", two founders of the gallery, and an invited curator, have come together to share the clues of each other's practice. We are willing to hand apples out to our audience. These paper apples function as Christmas gifts and behind-the-scenes reading materials of the show. Generosity per se is the creative force that resists holiday anxiety and slightly changes the rules of a curatorial game.

 

Text / Miao Zijin