I WISH YOU WERE HERE

I Wish You Were Here

This exhibition draws inspiration from the recent internet nostalgia wave epitomized by "core aesthetics." While "core aesthetics" encompasses diverse and intricate definitions, it often refers to a series of low-resolution, vividly colored, surreal images characteristic of millennial visual styles. These images evoke a fictional utopian vision, deeply imbued with nostalgia, within the collective consciousness of Gen Z: a warm atmosphere derived from childhood memories, yet accompanied by an unsettling unease. Taking this eerie nostalgic mood as its starting point, the exhibition delves into this persistent psychological instability, reflecting on concepts such as memory, fragility, nostalgia, and displacement within the context of contemporary image art.

Why do we feel nostalgic, and why does nostalgia elicit a familiar but discomfort emotion? Svetlana Boym, in The Future of Nostalgia, observes that "modern nostalgia is a mourning for the impossibility of mythical return, a search for spiritual solace. In the face of silence, the nostalgic individual seeks out resonant symbols, despairingly misinterpreting them." This "despairing misinterpretation" can be seen as a form of psychological homelessness. Nostalgia constructs a spiritual liminal space that paradoxically leads nowhere. While yearning for solace and stability, it inevitably points to the inescapable reality of disconnection. In this light, nostalgia emerges as a double negation of linear time: it neither truly commemorates the past nor charts a path toward the future. Instead, it extends laterally, forming a complex, cyclical mental space where unfulfilled promises, unresolved traumas, and cherished memories intertwine. Within this space, ghosts of the past drift like phantoms—past and future continually infiltrating the present to form an ever-persistent absence.

This exhibition can be understood as an attempt to manifest this mental space, as ten artists guide us into a disoriented déjà vu: immersing us in the idyllic holidays or the fleeting smiles captured on VHS tapes; navigating cavernous, mine-like dwellings just for a nice sleep; obsessing over the surfaces of images, as though dust could make memories belong to a distant past rather than just yesterday; standing solitary amidst ruins, grappling with historical legacies as finite bodies confront infinite cycles. Photography and video intertwine, carrying the weight of nostalgia in their endless recursion. Between photographs or the stills of video, ghosts of the past emerge, haunting these visual intervals.

I Wish You Were Here resonates as both a wistful sigh of longing and an impassioned cry, summoning the ghosts of the past that lie dormant within us. Like a safe, nocturnal earthquake, they subtly yet profoundly tremble through our being.
ARTIST: Lin Bai

Lin Bai, whose works involve photography and painting, focuses on the fragility of life and energy. Animals and natural landscapes frequently appear in her recent works.
ARTIST: Ye He

Ye He (b. 1998) is a Chinese artist based in the UK. She is pursuing her MPhil in Film and ScreenStudies at the University of Cambridge and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art & Historyof Art from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has also studied Western Esotericism at theUniversity of Amsterdam.Ye’smultifacetedpractice spansphotography, moving images, animation, and writing, oftennavigating the realms of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the occult to explore the margins of thespiritualworld.Her work frequently incorporates elements of sci-fi and cybernetics, creatingspeculative narratives that delve into the complexities of identity and consciousness. She viewsexperimental sites as forms of alchemy—reality-altering technologies that transcend materialontology and reveal deeper symbolic meanings.Ye’s interdisciplinary art projects have been exhibited in various spaces, including Tate Modern,Tate Lates of Tate Britain, UFO Terminal of Art West Bund Shanghai, London Photobook Cafe,AMP Gallery, Art Hub London, Lishui Photography Festival and Wuhan Photo Fair.
ARTIST: Jiayang Huang

Jiayang Huang was born in Hangzhou, China, and is a new media artist and academic researcher. He graduated from the Affiliated High School of the China Academy of Art, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (BFA), and holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Computational Media and Arts at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). Jiayang’s research lies at the intersection of artistic practice, technological media, and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on individual subjectivity and the unconscious mind. His works have been exhibited in museums and film festivals both in China and internationally, including the 12th International Video Poetry Symposium, West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, and HiShorts Xiamen Short Film Festival. His academic papers have also been featured in international conferences such as ACM Siggraph and AI-Art.
ARTIST: Lan Dongliang

Lan Dongliang, from Longyan, Fujian, is an extraordinaryphotographer who is anything but ordinary. From hisristics, his photography is truly everywhere! Focusing on the empty mirrors of almost no one,he explores the fascinating story of recording man-madescenes and natural scenes themselves.

He really hopes that when people see his work, they'll feelcalm and energised by the environments he captures.
ARTIST: Shi Yu

Shi Yu is an artist, writer, and curator, currently living and working in Beijing. His artistic practiceencompasses photography, action, video, performance and installation.Shi Yu's work often emerges from a sociological perspective, with a focus on boundaries—exploring and disrupting them. Drawing from everyday life, personal experience, and intuitivesensations, he delves into the psychological intersection between the familiar and the overlooked.His practice gathers the "embers" left behind by the friction between art and reality. By challenging,appropriating, and borrowing symbols of power, Shi Yu provokes attention—either directly orsymbolically—extracting and revealing the unnoticed events and states hidden in daily life, whilealso reflecting the attitudes of others toward these often-neglected elements.
ARTIST: Wenhao

Wenhao, born in 1989 in Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, graduated with a BFA degree in Photography from Taiyuan University of Technology in 2012, and graduated with a MFA degree with full marks in Photography Studies and Practice from Folkwang University of Arts in Germany in 2022. Since 2008, he has been using image as the main medium of artistic creations, thinking about the connection and transformation of photographic medium and his own life at different perspectives to create artworks with their own consciousness of life and "spiritual space".
ARTIST: Wang Yibing

Born in 1987 in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, Wang Yibing is an artist and curator. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts at South China Normal University in 2009, earned her master’s degree in Contemporary Art Creation and Theory from the same institution in 2012, and obtained her Ph.D. in Advanced Art Expression from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2022. During this time, she participated in the Diversity on the Arts Project, which focuses on “Art x Care” and aims to cultivate talent that supports a diverse and inclusive society. Currently, she works and resides in Japan as a curator at the Ken Domon Museum of Photography.

Her works is primarily based on the re-creation of photographic images, emphasizing the narrative relationship between images and material media, as well as how images influence and shape individual and collective understanding. Material imagination based on bodily perception is an important element in her work. In addition to her artistic practice and curatorial work, she is also involved in the digital archiving and preservation of photographic film.
ARTIST: Wang Cheng-Hsiang

Wang Cheng-Hsiang (Sean Wang), born in Taipei, Taiwan, received his master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of History at National Taiwan University and then went to the United States to study art photography. His artwork uses photography as a medium to explore the relationship between photography and art after conceptual art. Recent works focus on the concept of institutional critique.
ARTIST: Yang Weihan

Yang Weihan’s practice in photography spans across a wide variety of subject matters and forms, yet is threaded by his sensitive observation of everyday life and his continuous exploration in the foundation of the photographic medium. He often reconstructs and photographs seemingly ordinary moments in daily life, of which the complex meanings are often ignored at the moment but revealed later in remembrance. His work invites viewers to revisit the ordinary and discover the extraordinary, at the same time investigates the connection and transformation between the memory imagery and physical images. In his recent practice, Yang further develops his interest in photography’s materiality and starts a series of new experiments, exploring the possibilities of photo-making and its connection with other art forms.

Yang Weihan (b. 1999, Dalian, China) received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA; and a BA from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Yang’s work has been exhibited at venues including the UTA Artist Space in Beverly Hills, CA; Unveil Gallery in Irvine, CA; Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, CA; and Palos Verdes Art Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. He participated in the 2023 Small Press Book Bazaar at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is also the recipient of awards and residencies including a 2024 Anderson Ranch Residency, a 2023 Kala Art Institute Residency, a 2023 JumpstArt Grant, and a 2022 Bartman Fund Project Grant.
ARTIST: Yan Qihan

Yan Qihan obtained his master's degree in Fine Art at Chelsea Collage of Arts and currently lives in Shanghai.

Yan is an interdisciplinary artist whose art practice is a solo pastiche of a historical matrix normally constructed by the collective. Through this, he gains personal experiences reflecting on topics such as bio-politics and Anthropocene geology, then externalizes them with writing, film, and installation. He aims to re-evaluate the cultural and historical pedigree behind the matrix via his parody of spiritual heritage. For instance, he once went to the Baikonur cosmodrome of the USSR to collect and record the legacy of the cold war to produce his film THE CAVE; In 2022 he travelled between London and the Jurassic coast of southern England to carry out research into the Portland Stone strata and the colonial narrative behind London's Portland Stone buildings. His current study lies in the aesthetic collision between classical China and the landscape of the Anthropocene under the technological revolution, aiming to generate a "future history" of cultural existence that is complementary to it.
CURATOR: Li Zijian

Li Zijian obtained a master's degree in Global Media and Communications from the University of Melbourne. He currently serves as the curator and library director at the Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre, where he is engaged in photography theory research and curatorial work. He has initiated and curated the "Space on Paper - Jimei x Arles Photobook Exhibition" and has curated exhibitions such as "The Island, Lowercased: Time-Space Beyond the Map - Jimei x Arles 2023," "Dear Old Days - Ryoji Akiyama Solo Exhibition," "Three Shadows Unbounded Group Exhibition," as well as dozens of solo exhibitions for the Three Shadows Unbounded project.
Lin Bai, A Non-Existent Snake, 2023. Archival pigment print, 40 × 60cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Wen Hao, selected from Hin-Rück Series, 2022. Archival pigment print, 40 × 60cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Sean Wang, selected from Ice Black Lake series, 2016. Archival pigment print, 40 × 60cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Yan Qihan, Future Remnants: You Rise in the Next Jiazi Years, 2024. Coloured glaze, acrylics. Courtesy of the artist.
Jiayang Huang, selected from The Dream within Huanglong Cave series, 2023-2024. Vedio Game. Courtesy of the artist.
He Ye, selected from A Little Death series, 2024. HD video, 6 mins. Courtesy of the artist.
Yang Weihan, selected from Tian Mimi series, 2021-2022. Archival pigment print, 40 × 60cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Wang Yibing, selected from HAPPY HOLIDAYS series, 2021. Washi paper and wax. Courtesy of the artist.
Lan Dongliang, selected from Moment series, 2022. lnkjet print, 40 × 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Shi Yu, selected from Traversing the Mine Cave, 2022-2024. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.

I WISH YOU WERE HERE

I Wish You Were Here

Three Shadows Beijing

Three Shadows Xiamen

www.rongin.com

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