Tang Contemporary Art is proud to present the opening of “Block,” a solo show for Cai Lei featuring work from 2020, in the gallery’s second Beijing space on September 5, 2020. The Curator of the show is Sui Jianguo, and the academic director is Zhan Wang.
In forms ranging from relief images with a compressed perspective to assemblages of objects that create visual dislocations and tensions to interior landscaped installations, Cai Lei’s diverse practice has shifted from personal creative methods to linguistic patterns to artistic concepts. “Block,” the theme that he has chosen to explore due to the pandemic, represents a new direction in his work, namely, perceptions of everyday narratives and bodily experiences.
Block
Sui Jianguo
Several years ago, Cai Lei held three solo exhibitions in three years: “Method of Descent” (2014), “In Ambiguous Sight” (2015), and “Échelle des Plans” (2016). In that span, he shifted from relief images with a compressed perspective to assemblages of objects that create visual dislocations and tensions to landscaped interior installations. With this hop, skip, and a jump, he shifted from personal creative methods to linguistic patterns to artistic concepts. In his rapid leaps between the three, he has quickly grown into an eye-catching young artist.
Planning for the current exhibition began at the end of last year, but the coronavirus outbreak just before Chinese New Year changed Cai Lei’s work and its direction. This exhibition is presented in three interconnected spaces. The four walls of the first exhibition space show the kind of work for which Cai Lei is known: rooms and corridors presented with compressed perspective. What is different this time is that the perspectival rooms and corridors are compressed from the front and back, then compressed again from the left and right, changing the way we look at them and emphasizing the psychological influence of space. Here, Cai Lei has advanced his original perspective work.
However, the theme of perspective disappears almost entirely from the works displayed in the second and third spaces. The beds that recede into the wall using perspective appear on the primary wall in the second gallery, but they are no longer as meticulously arranged as the works in the first gallery.
 Beyond Freedom 191229Bronze 91 x 70 x 162 cm 2019 |  Block OneConcrete, steel structure 58.5 x 40 x 232 cm 2020 |  Over Under 20200825Bronze 109 x 55 x 1 cm 2020 |
|---|---|---|
 Over Under 20200823Bronze 110 x 50 x 1 cm 2020 |  Over Under 20200815Bronze 102 x 54 x 1 cm 2020 |  Over Under 20200801Bronze 101 x 55 x 1 cm 2020 |
 Over Under 20200718Bronze, 24K gold leaf on a concrete base 166 x 34 x 16 cm 2020 |  Block ThreeBronze, 24K gold leaf on a concrete base 55 x 46 x 320 cm 2020 |  Unfinished Home 20200425Concrete, steel structure 88 x 28.5 x 119 cm 2020 |
 Unfinished Home 20200820Cement 180 x 30 x 5 cm 2020 |  Pass Through 202003Acrylic on canvas, steel 200 x 90 x 9 cm 2020 |  Pass Through 202005Acrylic on canvas, steel 200 x 175 x 10.5 cm 2020 |
 Beyond Gold 20200303Bronze, 24K gold leaf on a concrete base 42 x 34 x 85.5 cm 2020 |  Block TwoConcrete, steel structure 29.6 x 19.6 x 215 cm 2020 |  0101#Acrylic on canvas 180 x 98.5 x 20 cm 2020 |
 0103#Acrylic on canvas 150 x 63 x 4 cm 2020 |  Over Under 20200901Bronze, 24K gold leaf on a concrete base 104 x 54 x 1 cm 2020 |  0102#Acrylic on canvas 180 x 152 x 5 cm 2020 |
Artist
Cai Lei
b.1983 in Changchun, Jilin province, China.
Cai Lei’s works explore the relationship between illusion and space. From his interest in planarity, he carves out an illusory conceptual space which oscillates between the second and third dimension for his creations. Working in both painting and mixed media sculptural relief, light plays an important factor in enhancing this illusion of depth. Painted spaces of interior hallways or corners simultaneously protrude and recede depending on the viewer’s experience of the work.
Cai Lei graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sculpture at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. An award winning young artist from the 80s generation, he has exhibited internationally including the Yangtze Art Museum (Chongqing), Foundation Taylor (Paris), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), CAFA Museum (Beijing), Poly Art Museum (Beijing), Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Today Art Museum (Beijing), and Museum of Contemporary Art Bonn (Germany). His solo exhibitions experience: “23 Square Meters”(2018), Whitestone Gallery, Taiwan; “Échelle des plans”(2016), Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing; “In Ambiguous Sight, Unaccompanied”(2016), Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, China; Group Exhibitions: “Motif and material”(2017), Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong; “Among”(2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Bonn, Germany; CAFA Postgraduates Graduate Exhibition”(2015), CAFA Museum, Beijing, China.
Curator
Sui Jianguo
b. 1956 in Qingdao, Shandong province, China.
Sui Jianguo received a BA in the Fine Arts Department from the Shandong University of Arts in 1984 and an MA in the Sculpture Department from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989, where he is a professor in the Sculpture Department.
Sui Jianguo's art explores his unique understanding and recognition of creation, form, alternative media, alternative methods, and space-time for 30 years. He has participated in many group and solo exhibitions .