Interim Abode: Objects and Landscapes by Fang Zhixiang

Deep within everyone’s memory, there exists an “interim abode.” It may not be a grand residence or an expansive estate, yet it carries our most primal imaginings of stability, aspiration, and our place in the world. Interim Abode, Fang Zhixiang’s first solo exhibition at Yuan Museum, invites viewers into a landscape constructed from memory, labor, and geometric sensibility.

This exhibition presents an imagined vision of a “villa” in a county town. Using childhood memories as a guiding thread, Fang gazes with measured calm at those figures in his recollection—people who never dared to aspire even to houses with courtyards, fountains, sculptures, artificial rockeries, or towering trees. For them, and for his own memories, the artist reconstructs a garden. What Fang presents is not a replication of a real scene, but an architecture of the inner spirit. Here, traces of social transformation coexist with a pursuit that transcends material conditions: even in the most “interim” of circumstances, people have never ceased to build their visions of an ideal dwelling.

The humble and resilient carpenter “A Xi” in Fang Zhixiang’s narrative is less a specific individual than a microcosm of an era—a symbol of countless ordinary people who labor silently within the currents of everyday life. His longing for “a clean cement house” stands in sharp contrast to the “villas” of reality, with their high walls, fountains, and sculptures. This contrast is not intended as simple critique, but rather as the artist’s clear-eyed contemplation of county-town landscapes, social stratification, and the desires embedded within them.

Fang Zhixiang’s practice has always been rooted in the everyday. He began by painting patterned floor tiles; once their utilitarian function was stripped away, what remained—the lines, structures, and rhythms—became the foundation of his abstract language. For this exhibition, Fang returns to childhood memory as a point of departure, expanding his focus to a broader field: architectural structures, the articulation of façades, and the contours of everyday tools and domestic objects. These familiar elements are reinterpreted through the ancient yet resonant medium of lacquer. The layered application of lacquer mirrors the accumulation of time and memory. Through this visual language, Fang transforms the laboring presence of countless “A Xis,” the hybrid villa aesthetics of county towns, and the geometric spirit of everyday objects into a series of quiet yet profound images. What he offers is not a representation of reality, but an inner spiritual architecture—one that reveals both the marks of social change and a longing that exceeds materiality.

We sincerely invite you to step into Interim Abode, the world constructed by Fang Zhixiang. Here, you may momentarily set aside questions of function and utility, and attend instead to lines shaped by memory and structures condensed from desire. Perhaps within them, you too may glimpse a familiar landscape from deep within your own inner world.