Preface
Text/Xiao Ruiyun
The works of Zhou Xinyu exist on the hazy line between reality and surreality. They are the delicate whispers between nature and the zoo, as well as the imaginations based on the real world, whispering the joy of daydreaming.
The audience will engage the scenario in a narrative manner as they approach Roadside Garden at the exhibition hall's entrance, as though following a trail to the Peach Blossom Spring through pure serendipity. The photos and paintings alternate, reproducing the paradoxical unity between the ideal shore and the actual location. The photographs frequently employ a framed composition, such as a photograph of water reflections with an illusory mirror of the ideal on the inside and a leafy roadside mirroring our life on the outside. Such an approach is also applied to the other two series.
Whispers from the Zoo immerses the audience in the author's subjective experience of living in a zoo among the animals. Zhou Xinyu enhances the picture base of the zoo, which acts as a personal marking suspended over the environment, with light spots and other digital painting components. For her, photography is about capturing instantaneous memory and atmosphere accurately, whereas painting is an abstracted expression of them, reflecting the different desires of each individual in society by overlaying them in the language of painting.
Swaying at Dusk is a series of paintings only. Zhou Xinyu studies the most romantic time of day, dusk, which also marks the start of daydreams and all desires. She transforms the scene she sees at the present into the nuances before nightfall, swaying at will and dreaming of tranquil beauty, using the brushstrokes of digital painting.
The works of Zhou Xinyu return to a discussion of the nature of photography and painting. From the standpoint of art history, painters as early as Impressionism and Cubism believed that photography was sufficient to record reality, allowing painting to express itself more freely and interpret reality from a different perspective. Today's reality is more individualized, and Zhou Xinyu's personal invention exhibits a time-sensitive vision, exposing an inner desire for realism. The point of view changes between photography and painting. Painting adds more creativity to reality with a secondary and subjective perspective, whereas photography is a subjective perspective that preserves reality. Her work is like a kaleidoscope of perspectives where the audience could find their own feelings and memories reverberating in the game of looking.
We hope that the audience will experience a daytime fantasy, an artificial dusk time, and the freedom to true desire and pleasure.