Editor’s note: Themed on “Chasing the Light”, 2025 CAFA Graduation Season kicked off at CAFA Art Museum in early summer. Surrounded by diversified creations, visitors may find that some of graduates chose performance to burst their inner impulses, some chose to interact with the space to build their visual tension, and some got inspired from traditions to bring about more contemporary creative appearances. More young creators are paying their attention to drawing materials from the life around them, trying to capture the multiple realities of emotions, experiences and thoughts...
In these cases, the collisions between individual experience and the external world, between new and old media, as well as between virtual life and real life have repeatedly inspired their creativity that may not be perfect but fresh. In the poster of 2025 CAFA Graduation Season, a symbolic apple is outlined in a constantly changing form under the illumination of light. CAFA graduates who believe in “light”, follow the light in their hearts and present their initial explorations of “what art is” that have been honed for several years at their degree shows. Featuring interviews with graduates, “CAFA Graduates Who Believe in ‘Light’”, invites graduates to talk about their creative stories from a more microscopic and in-depth perspective, and we would like to share and convey the “light” in the hearts of young people through these candid and vivid narrations.
Oops
By Chen Xu, Department of Sculpture
My graduation work for the degree show is “Oops”. In this work, the objects on the table are partially electroplated with toxic lead and moved extremely slowly on the table through a pulley system. I try to make them meet, pass by each other and move further away while moving, gradually leaving traces when they wear and tear, which become heavier during the exhibition.
I got inspired by the traces left by myself with keys at my childhood home and the title “Oops” came from my recent experience in daily life: I am about to graduate, and the trivialities of things and the changes in my life make me feel extremely disordered. I hope to convey a sense of chronically poisoned dissipation in daily life through this process and traces.
Exhibition View of Oops
Details of Oops
The selection of objects on the table is highly random, but this randomness is within the limits of “daily life”. In other words, they are essentially objects that may appear on the table with a high probability. But I chose lead that has an extreme tension with daily life, it is characterized by a toxic, plain and heavy sense.
Details of Oops
I did not treat my work as a “result” of sculpture or installation, but it is an ongoing process for me. I think the boundary of sculpture has long been expanded to where it is intangible. I prefer to find something that is glimpsed and subtle within this boundary. This work is established as a superposition process of events and results. Therefore, if we must talk about sculpture, “sculpture” here is simplified to a process that materials wear and tear.
Installation View of Oops
Exhibition View of Oops
I have set these objects to move very slowly, so that most viewers think it is a group of still life and just glance at it. And isn’t the limited attention threshold for objects also the reason for the “awful” feeling in our lives to a certain extent?
The Preparing Process of Oops
Exhibition View of Oops
For me, the description of light is quite appropriate, which can be understood as the desire, curiosity and elusiveness of “art” itself. It is always accompanied by darkness, which means that in the process of trying to figure it out, it is always accompanied by disappointment, confusion and disenchantment. Upon the occasion that I am about to leave CAFA where I have studied for eight years, it seems that this feeling has been further deepened, that is, art itself is not important, but what is important is what this light allows us to see and how we act accordingly.
The Workshot of Chen Xu
Text and Image Courtesy of Chen Xu, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.
