Hive Center for Contemporary Art is excited to present Yang Xinyi’s latest solo exhibition, “Sensory Sonnet”, opening at Hive Becoming Shanghai on 28 June 2024. The exhibition features a series of paintings from the artist’s recent body of work. This show is curated by Lin Shengbing and will be on view until 20 August.

Born in Shenyang in 1998, Yang Xinyi graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020 and later obtained her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Yang’s latest creative practice revolves around the sensory archaeology of personal history. Like Baudelaire’s flâneur, with the help of her unconscious writing, she searches for salient objects and events in the disorderly streets of her memory. After anchoring her mind on a specific palpable matter, she spreads out the snare of senses, and arranges all the sensory experiences and fluttering associated with it on the canvas with tender brushstrokes and pastel palettes of shojo manga, all in its order, achieving the poetic coding process of the personal history while bringing a tangible form to the more chaotic and raw sensory experiences.

The Chinese title of the exhibition, “Sensory Sonnet”, derives from Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry collection Illuminations, which corresponds to the artist’s approach to painting and the nature of creating. Illumination, meaning lighting, can also be defined as intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, referring to the two major sources of Rimbaud’s poetic practice, namely reality and the experience of association. Throughout her consistent creative practice, misplaced senses, overlapping imagery, and ambiguous significations, Yang Xinyi, in her disconnected recollections of life adrift and childhood experiences, reveals the relationship behind the world of senses with obscure and metaphorical images, similar to Rimbaud’s “Vowels”, which intertwines multi-sensory experiences such as colour, taste, and touch. The ring-shaped patterns scattered on the canvas are like pupils confronting the exterior of the surface, as well as mottled retinal marks left by bright light; along with interspersing landscapes distant from the imagery of reality, they establish a clearing where memory, dream, and reality overlap.

Notably, in Yang Xinyi’s works, there is rarely any trace of technology. Embryo-like structure and colour flecks that resemble mossy algae, and the attention to the primal state of life reflect not only her identity as a woman, but also the discontent and unease with the weakened, divided, and even disposed reality of human senses under the intervention of modern technology. From this, what exists in Yang’s works is more than poetic personal memories; it is the evocation of the return of the original senses.

About the artist

Yang Xinyi (b.1998) received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020 and her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Yang Xinyi sees painting as a medium that leads to inner reality. She uses light colours to depict soft lines, leaving traces of her spiritual exploration on the canvas. Her works focus on the subtle changes in the natural environment, reflecting the psychological impact of nature. Her recent and upcoming exhibitions include Sensory Sonnet, Hive Contemporary of Art, Shanghai (2024); Attractive, Tamashin RISURU Hall, Tachikawa City (2024); Nostalgic Eye, A/W Space, Nanjing (2023); Mothism, SEAGER Gallery, London (2023); Whispered Canvases: Part One, Silian Gallery, London (2023); Polyphonic, Crypt Gallery, London (2023); Backstroke，Batsford Gallery, London (2023)