As part of the Curated by series, UCCA is pleased to present Temperature, an intriguing exhibition of emerging artist Yan Bing Curated by leading Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong. The show displays installations and paintings made with organic material and form. Earth, cow skin, animal shapes and rough surfaces create genuine art works interweaved with the artist’s memory and nostalgia.

“Yan Bing demonstrates an extraordinary maturity in his works, recalling a certain inspiration from the Arte Poverra movement yet imposing his own sense of material and shape to create this artistic universe whose heart beat is highly palpable,” feels Jerome Sans, UCCA Director.

Among the reasons why he has chosen Yan Bing for this edition of Curated by, Liu Xiaodong explains: “In the age of globalization and superfast consumption, we don’t need to care about anything. Computers help us remember everything, and flesh and soul can be easily swapped like excess commodities. Even battlefields are no longer littered with corpses, just as electronic games leave us with no traces. However, Yan Bing brings us traces, traces with a temperature. Yan Bing’s trace is in fact a handful of soil, which suddenly becomes so concrete in his hand, so incredible and with a temperature”. Being still in front of this temperature…we reflect on what we have done, what we ought to do and ought not to.

For Yan Bing, “if all things have their own spirits, then a spade shall have its personality and a pile of mud shall have its own temper. When all the details of this world have been over-defined, are we embodied with more wisdom or less? When all we see has been conceptualized and thus has lost what makes it interesting, I would rather go back to the age of innocence”.

Curated by is UCCA’s branded initiative to support the next generation of Chinese artists. Intending to give artists their first opportunity for a solo show, Curated by will make a series of exhibitions at UCCA in 2009.