这个冬天，东画廊将荣幸呈现一批来自工作并生活于纽约与杭州的艺术家徐进的非凡画作。他是中国‘85新潮及其“‘85新空间”展览的先驱成员，并四十多年来坚持绘画这一创作媒介。在与东画廊合作的首次展览中，徐进描绘了一系列相互关联的主题，从现象学的层面构建历史隐喻、虚构现实与感性幻象的组合。
徐进通过预先确立的景观形式语言，转置个人和集体经验中的片段，同时探讨现代社会的乌托邦和敌托邦思想之间的观念集合。他对人性失谐所导致的悲剧进行重新定义，并将观者裹挟于某种脆弱感之中，这种脆弱感来自世俗生活本身辐射出的危机气氛。占据画面的巨大荒芜与混沌超越了存在主义的范畴，却强调了所谓文化回归的暴虐本质。他经常提及环境污染、恐怖主义等问题，以此唤起观者对于命运无常及其负担的审视。深刻的批判意识是徐进绘画创作的起点，且逐渐为其开辟出一条连贯的发展脉络。
在题为《万物有灵》的作品中，徐进描绘了一片昏暗的朦胧地带。如此梦幻的场景看似是无人之境，实际上却融合了无数鬼魅般的身影。他们或缓行于边界之上，或消失在崎岖之中，又或互相围绕。然而，画面中还存在着一位从物质世界当中放逐出来的陌生男性，试图完成自我救赎。这是徐进在移居海外的过程中所感受到的不安。他夸张地勾画出当今时代的核心——荒诞性，亦向未知宇宙发出致敬。
徐进，1958年出生于浙江黄岩。1977年被浙江美术学院（现中国美术学院）油画班录取，1985年调回母校任教。随后，他担任保加利亚艺术家万曼·瓦尔班诺夫的助手并工作于万曼壁挂研究所。上世纪八十年代中后期，徐进积极参与到中国的前卫艺术运动当中。他早期创作的《内省》《对话》《零点》在杭州“‘85新空间”展览中展出，籍此奠定职业生涯。他于1989年迁至纽约，现在在这两个城市都拥有工作室。2018年，宁波美术馆为徐进举办个展“对·话”，回顾其创作历程。
This winter, Don Gallery is honoured to present an extraordinary collection of paintings by New York-and-Hangzhou-based artist XU Jin, the pioneering member of China's '85 New Wave and its "'85 New Space" exhibition who has persisted with the medium for more than four decades. In his first exhibition with Don Gallery, XU Jin depicts a series of interconnected subjects to construct composites of historical metaphors, mythical realities and perceptual illusions at a phenomenological level.
Through a pre-established language of landscaped forms, XU Jin transposes fragments from both individual and collective experience, also explores the evocative aggregates between the utopic and dystopic ideas about modern society. He redefines the confusing, incongruent episodes of human tragedies by enveloping the beholders within a particular weakness of the war-like conditions in mundane life. The confounding wilderness in his oeuvre goes beyond the range of existentialism, yet reinforcing the barbaric sadistic nature toward a culture of regression. His frequent reference to environmental contamination and terrorism issues calls forth the non-distanced gaze on the terrible twist of fate and its burden. The continuing significance of critical consciousness demonstrates itself as the point of departure for an integral path in XU Jin's practice.
In the work entitled Everything Has a Soul, XU Jin painted a twilight zone of confusion. Seemingly of a no man's land though, the dark scene actually embraces shadowy figures who trail along the edges, slip into the trails, stand in the closes, while the male stranger is posited in the midst as being exiled from the material world, who attempts to redeem himself. It is the outcome of the disorderly feeling of dwelling abroad. XU Jin dramatised the absurdity at the core of the present era and renders tribute to the unknown universe.
XU Jin was born in Huangyan, Zhejiang in 1958. He was admitted to the oil painting class at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts) in 1977 and appointed to its faculty in 1985. He then became assistant to Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov and worked in his tapestry studio. During the mid and late 80s, he was actively involved in the avant-garde movement in China. Three of his early significant works-Introspection, The Conversation and Midnight-were exhibited in the "'85 New Space" exhibition in Hangzhou, which marked the starting point of his career. He moved to New York in 1989 and now owns studio in both cities. In 2018, Ningbo Museum of Art mounted XU Jin's solo exhibition "Dialogue," as a retrospective.
