After the Image

After the Image

In contemporary visual culture, the image no longer appears as a stable endpoint of representation. It operates instead as a transitional condition—formed through historical sedimentation, perceptual negotiation, and material transformation. After the Image takes this instability not as a crisis of visibility, but as a structural premise: the image is understood here as something that is continuously made, unmade, and reconfigured across different regimes of time, matter, and perception.

The exhibition unfolds through four artistic positions that trace a shifting ontology of the image—from its formation to its dissolution.

For Chen Yun, the image emerges as an archaeological structure, in which religious iconography, cultural hybridity, and personal memory are interwoven into spatial-temporal constructions. Her work frames the image as a site of layered historical transmission, where visual forms function as inherited yet transformable systems.

This structural condition becomes unstable in the practice of Lu Shuang, where mineral pigments and mural traditions are reactivated through processes of controlled disruption. Here, the image is no longer a fixed composition but a negotiated field between order and contingency. Material behavior and painterly intention coexist without resolution, generating forms that remain in continuous formation.

In contrast, Li Xiaodan’s practice sustains the image as a system of cultural continuity. Drawing from classical pictorial traditions and Eastern aesthetic systems, she constructs visual fields in which formation, fracture, and repair operate as an internal logic. Change is not narrated, but embedded within the structure of the image itself. Rupture does not signify an end, but becomes a condition for renewal, allowing the image to remain both historically grounded and perceptually open in a state of fragile continuity.

This continuity reaches a critical threshold in the practice of Zhang Yonghong, where the image is gradually displaced by material process. Through stitching, cutting, weaving, and layering, representation dissolves into tactile, emotional, and symbolic residues. Here, the image no longer operates as a stable visual system, but re-emerges as a fragmented field of affect, memory, and material trace. The visual no longer holds as a coherent system; it disperses into fragments of labor, memory, and material duration.

Across these four positions, after functions both as temporal condition and epistemic distance. It marks not a succession beyond the image, but a space in which the image persists in unstable states—emerging, destabilizing, sustaining, and dissolving.

Ultimately, After the Image proposes that the image is not an object to be seen, but a field of ongoing negotiation between form and matter, history and perception. What remains is not a singular visual truth, but a shifting terrain in which seeing itself is continuously reconfigured.

— Curator Marina Song

在图像之后

在当代视觉文化中，图像不再作为再现的稳定终点而存在，而是作为一种过渡性的状态，由历史沉积、感知协商与物质转化共同生成。《在图像之后》并不将这种不稳定性视为可见性的危机，而是将其确立为一种结构性前提：图像在此被理解为一个持续生成、拆解并不断重组的过程性存在，横跨时间、物质与感知的不同层面。

展览围绕四种艺术实践展开，它们共同勾勒出图像在不同存在论状态中的迁移路径——从生成到消散。

在陈赟的创作中，图像首先作为一种考古性的结构被建立。宗教图像、文化杂糅与个人记忆在画面中彼此交织，形成具有空间与时间复合维度的视觉构成。图像在此并非再现性的对象，而是一种层叠的历史传递机制，其视觉形式作为可被继承并不断转化的系统而存在。

这一结构在陆霜的实践中进入不稳定状态。通过矿物颜料与壁画传统的再激活，图像在控制与偶然之间不断生成与偏移。在这一过程中，图像不再是封闭的构图系统，而成为秩序与偶发性持续协商的场域。材料的物理属性与绘画意图并置而不趋于统一，从而使形式始终处于生成之中。

相较之下，李笑丹的实践维持图像作为文化连续性的机制。她借由古典绘画传统与东方美学，在视觉中建立起一种以生成、破碎与修复为内在逻辑的结构。图像在此并非以叙事方式呈现变化，而是在无常与转化之间，将时间性内化为形式法则。破裂并不指向终结，而成为持续生成的条件，使图像在承载历史深度的同时，以一种脆弱却持续的方式对当代感知保持开放。

这一连续性在张永宏的实践中抵达临界点。通过缝制、切割、编织与层叠等物质操作，图像逐渐脱离再现系统，转化为触觉、情绪与符号交织的时间性残余。在此，图像不再作为一个稳定的视觉系统运作，而是在情感、记忆与物质痕迹之间重新显现为碎片化的场域。视觉结构不再成立，而是散落为劳动、记忆与物质持续性的碎片。在这一由生成至消散的整体结构中，“之后”既是一种时间性条件，也是一种认知性距离。它并不意味着图像序列的终结，而是指向一个图像持续处于不稳定状态中的空间——生成、扰动、维系与消散在此同时发生。

最终，《在图像之后》所提出的，并非图像作为对象的可见性问题，而是图像在形式与物质、历史与感知之间持续协商的存在论场域。所留下的，并非单一的视觉真理，而是一片不断变化的地形，在其中“观看”本身被持续重构。

——策展人 宋京泯