Xia Chengan

Xia Chengan

Xia Chengan:Artificial Charisma

How to enhance one’s charm? Today, opinion leaders and Internet celebrities with five thousand to fifty thousand or even five million followers on global social media constantly pass on their tips for enhancing charisma. Content ranging from skincare, fitness, and nail care that improve one’s appearance to foreign language learning, etiquette training, and psychological healing that discover one's "inner beauty", as well as tutorials on a variety of topics, such as creating a persona, making jokes, and increasing one's leadership.

In the present-day media ecology, such behaviours and expressions about charisma are usually not spread through written words but are created, displayed, and promoted in the logic of images, either still or in motion. It is even more noteworthy that these charismatic images are not produced via traditional photography, but processed through downloading, screenshots, reposting, photoshop, collage, appropriation, and creating memes in the context of social media. These actions of acquiring images are fundamentally different from that via classical image making devices that rely on optical components—they directly jump into image consumption without the process of image production. This image making methods have been simplified or just simply ignored the pre-production and shooting steps and focused on post-production. Moreover, this post-production is different from what it used to be in the traditional sense, as it is a “post post-production”.

Nowadays, driven by charisma, the turn to “post post-production” has shaped the current image making ecology. The common ground shared between the image creator, and the viewer is that they are looking for fantasy rather than reality. The images that are wrapped by charm become more and more seductive, like a siren's song, sung by consumerism. An important feature of this process is the absence of the artist, as the image making ecology based on mobile devices and social networks is very different from what it used to be. In the past, professional visual artists, such as painters and photographers, were the most important image makers. Today, especially in nowadays China, the leading and the most influential image makers are internet celebrities and the powerful MCN companies behind them, who are very good at promoting and boosting traffic. While feeding all ends in the mass communication chain, this massive image making mechanism is turning charisma into cliché.

In response to the above phenomena, Xia Chengan, who has a background in visual communication design, combines the graphic designer's ability to apply visual culture with the contemporary artist's visionary deconstruction of the economy and society. Instead of strategically residing in the high culture and ignoring the stream of images bombarding from all around, Xia chose to participate in it with his own attitude.

Xia Chengan chooses to expose his personal visual identity by creating self-obsession through photography, conceptual art, computational imaging, and digital post-production. In his solo exhibition Xia Chengan: Artificial Charisma, we can further see how he interprets charisma by constructing images: filtered selfies generated through Kuaishou (China's second-largest short video app) templates; self-published brochures that appropriate the design of gossip magazines and propaganda slogans; classic bronze busts that idolizing the artist’s own character; the artist’s new series that draws from the stereotyped images of the socioeconomic division of labour and career anxiety; as well as the confusing character ‘Master Xia’, who’s identity is transplanted from the collectivist aesthetics of a specific era. Starting with the artist’s self-portrait, a series of works that explore different cultural phenomena intertwined with each other in this exhibition.

Every viewer can interpret these artworks in their own ways. However, I would like to raise several questions: is the artist a mirror? Is Xia Chengan the single-lens camera that captures our time and reflects the image ecology? Are his works the graphics processing units of “charisma”? Is his character real, or just an empty gesture?

In the deliberately dazzling display and installation, Xia Chengan opposes the popular "less is more" intellectual elite style and the "ice-code" fashionista style. He plays with the information implied in the images and attempts to reinterpret the possibilities of photography through his works. In this self-designed scenario, Xia Chengan constantly emphasises his “more is more” philosophy—the ultimately complicated charisma.
ARTIST: Xia Chengan

Born in 1995 in Shanghai, Xia Chengan now lives and works in Shanghai. Keeping the aesthetic of “more is more”, his practice focuses on the formation of cultural symbols in the contemporary Chinese context and the cultural phenomena behind them, with the mediums of print, photography, video, installation and performance. He deconstructs visual symbols and recreates them through appropriation, collage, and the creation of ironic narratives, and uses them to explore larger issues such as consumerism, technology, tradition, and politics. In 2020, he graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with a master's degree in visual communication, and in 2018 received a bachelor's degree in visual communication from the School of Design, East China Normal University.

Recently, he has participated in the following exhibitions: “Connections”, Virginia Bianchi Gallery, Online, 2022; “Happy Once, Happy Twice”, Cross Culture Center, Shanghai, 2022; “Ocean 2”, Slime Engine, Online, 2021; “USB Muti-Port Linking Exhibition”, Madein Gallery, Gallery Func, Qiao Space, WWART Expo, 2021; “Hereditary Territory”, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, 2021; “Guerrillas in Flatland: Unite! Digital Voyagers”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2021; “Is It A Good Time?”, Mana Contemporary, Chicago, 2021; “Time Perception: Through Images and Installation”, Coutts Art Center, Shanghai, 2020; “Launch”, SAIC Gallery, Chicago, 2020; “Unbounded”, Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre, 2020; “Ars Electronica”, Online, 2020. Recent residency projects include “Pararailing”, Shanghai, 2021; “De:formal Gallery online residency”, Online, 2020.
©Wang Yiquan. Photo: JJYPHOTO

CURATOR: Wang Yiquan

Wang Yiquan is an active figure in China’s contemporary art scene as a curator and an artist. His creative practice and research interests lie in film, performance art, urban space, and the relationship between art and economy. Having devoted himself to a diverse set of intertwining issues for over a decade, Wang's artistic approach and development are multi-faceted yet highly integrated.

Curating exhibitions and planning art programs are integral aspects of Wang's artistic practice. In 2018, he served as the co-curator of the second Contemporary Theatre Biennale, Shenzhen, where he produced a series of performance art by artists in parks, urban villages, and squares outside the theatre and white cube context, reflecting the new directions of Chinese contemporary art. In 2019, he presented a city curating project titled Streetwise, in Shanghai’s Xintiandi, featuring live art and happenings with the street as the background by creative practitioners and artists. In 2021, jointly commissioned by Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and Shanghai Vanke, he curated the survey exhibition Meditations on the Urban Spectacle in the historic building of Sun Ke’s Villa, reflecting the relationship between the city and art. This year, his research and curatorial project FELLOWS opened at the SNAP(The School of Visual Arts New York City’s Art Platform in Shanghai), focusing on Chinese Post-1980s artists and investigating this unique generational and cultural phenomenon.

In the 8th Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Wang Yiquan takes image making as the key curatorial concept and explores the new mechanisms of the production of images in today’s contemporary life and future imaging. He nominated and curated Malaysian Chinese filmmaker Tan Chui Mui’s solo exhibition Just Because You Pressed the Shutter? and Shanghai young artist Xia Chengan’s solo exhibition Xia Chengan: Artificial Charisma to compete for the Jimei x Arles Discovery Award. The former uses maps, live surveillance video, and AI-generated images to recall the memory of the hometown. The latter starts from individual experience and expresses the charisma and allure of global circulated images with the artist's maximalist more-is-more aesthetics.
Xia Chengan, Ba Fang Lai Cai (Wealth from All Directions), from Wealth Art Series, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Ri Jin Dou Jin (Earning Hundreds of Money Every Day), from Wealth Art Series, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Huang Jin Wan Liang (Thousands Taels of Gold), from Wealth Art Series, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Packaging Specification, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, User Profiling, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Shared Common Area, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Quantitative Easing, 2022. Inkjet print, double-sided mounted on aluminum composite panel, 150cm x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Xia Chengan, Laser Rain, 2020. Web-based art, 3-channel video installation, 1080P, 1 min, looping. Courtesy of the artist.