Intelligentsia Zine No.1

INTELLIGENTSIA 智先画廊 ZINE

Jan. 2015

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INTELLIGENTSIA MANIFESTO Intelligentsia explores the relationship between art and life, between concepts and creation.

Intelligentsia is a space for the conception and diffusion of ideas and their manifestation in the realm of contemporary art.

Intelligentsia presents ideas in the form of texts, publications, images, pictures, photographs, paintings, performances, videos, objects, events.

Intelligentsia offers collectible materials that communicate the ideas of artistic production.

Intelligentsia creates a space for positions and oppositions, for dialogue and contradictions.

Intelligentsia is a platform for converging projects, juxtaposing narratives, and conflicting art.

Intelligentsia recognizes that diversity of projects create an intelligence of contemporary art.

Intelligentsia is concerned with artistic production and artistic process.

Intelligentsia is fueled with the intellectual discourse of art.

Intelligentsia presents events as artistic production.

Intelligentsia is an independent art space in Beijing.

智先 画廊 宣言 智先探索艺术与生活，观念与创作的关系。 概念在这一空间中孕育和传播，并以当代艺术的方式得以展现。 智先的思想通过文本、出版物、影像、图片、摄影、油画、表演、视频、物体、活动的形式呈现。 智先提供具有收藏意义的素材，传播艺术生产的理念。 智先的空间兼容了立场与对峙，对话与矛盾。 智先作为开放的平台，兼有趋同的项目、并置的叙事、冲突的艺术。 智先认识到当代艺术的智慧源于项目的多样性。 智先关注艺术生产及其产生过程。 智先以艺术的思辨讨论为驱动。 智先将活动作为一种艺术生产。 智先是位于北京的独立艺术空间。

MANIFESTO ON NOTHINGNESS Garcia Frankowski

Nothingness has the virtue of surviving through any battle. Modern warfare not in the format of drones or cyber espionage, but in the polarization of a materialist dialectic, absorbs everything into its insatiable vortex.

Nothingness is the ungraspable matter that is left after everything has been consumed.

Nothingness is that dessert of hard, irreverent edges. Nothingness waits indifferent at the other side of a door opened a hundred years ago in an attempt to reach the ultimate sublime. In a world plagued with opportunistic ideologies and temporary systems, passing regimes and totalitarian dogmas, Nothingness remains immutable.

This Nothingness looks past the dialectical relationship between the existence-driven non-consciousness of objects in their being-in-themselves state and self-conscious subjects that through being-for-themselves become aware of their existence in their deprivation of autonomy from a world consisting of predetermined systems and objectivized matter. When rationale and logic, when the visceral and the subconscious are transformed in the grammar of commoditized matter, Nothingness speaks an unintelligible language. Nothingness looks past structures of reason, however pure, dialectical or cynical they might claim to be. Nothingness has no method and denies any praxis.

Confronted with an ever-expanding black hole that absorbs whatever manifestation of everyday life, Nothingness is freed by its inherent lack of light. In a world without qualities, Nothingness is enlightenment as selfpreserving darkness. Absolute Nothingness strives in absolute obscurity.

Nothingness exists in the words of this manifesto and in the basic manifestations of its formal articulations. Its processes and actions, shapes and outlets are the inherent, universal language of silence. Without uttering a word, Nothingness communicates undecipherable dictums.

Operating as a critical project since the creation of the Readymade, and as a post-critical axiom since the first Black Square, Nothingness inhabits an interstitial space invisible to the shortsightedness of current aestheticpolitical values. Nothingness is the ultimate goal of its own project. Nothingness is self-sufficient, absolute.

However clear its cartographic characteristics, and its intellectual makeup, Nothingness is not a doctrine, or a regime, or a dogma. Nothingness obliterates any stereotype, preconception, and expectation. It implodes any structure. It destroys the crushing weight of paraphernalia of superfluous authenticity, be it of the superficial metaphysics of awareness and responsibility, or the hypocritical forms of empathic aesthetics and altruism.

Nothingness refuses to carry the fictional weight that has been thrown to in order justify volatile relevance, fluctuating value, and oscillating legitimacy.

Nothingness is all that is left after humankind has been sequestered by its self- imposed conditions. Nothingness is pure freedom; Art as Nothingness.

THIS IS THE END Jacob Dreyer

No. 9 A Victory Over Nothingness January 25, 2015 Xie Molin Pavel Kiselev Aoto Oouchi Garcia Frankowski

Neither black nor white are properly human colors; the human body, a sack of fluid hauled through landscapes, is as blue as the night when unseen, and red when gouged open; the color of our life-substance. Blackness: the end of history, a total inscription; and black is beautiful. Whiteness: a deep snow, a complete amnesia, a nothingness. A black square: that would be a real victory over nothingness. A time when all words could be said, safe in the knowledge that they’d be lost in a cacophony and immediately forgotten; an end to history, praise His name. Yet today in our city, the color is not yet black; from the air, it looks grey, punctuated with lights by night, diseased veins straddled with pinpricks, rickety pathways through which new energy gasps. The sparks are the clacking of blades in our homeland, the adorable site of the war of all against all. Everything changes, every shack will be razed, every object consumed and reproduced, every person will die, their fluids staining the streets; nothing will change, our replacements will repopulate the world without anybody noticing our absence.

Ah yes: an exception, the artist. The artist or intellectual is an observer; in the process of removing ourselves from the scene to gain perspective in the creation of the work, we remove ourselves from that scene; far enough away and it looks pure black, like the future, or pure white like the past.

Malevich: a scribbler, a graphomaniac, a pervert riding the streetcars. He has floated out of the square, outside of the field of vision; like the creep he is, he stands behind us, tapping us on the shoulder.

Of the author of a “Memoir of the Future” have been written words that could be equally true of Malevich, his contemporary: “he wanted to perform imaginary experiments with the nature of space and time.

Outside, in the streets, the state was performing such experiments for real.”

In the predictive utopia of art, a black square was possible; in the city, a red square, the human color of a stain, was the closest thing possible; a red which soaked into a greasy grey pavement. The city, a flattened hive; a vector through which humans swerve apparently at random. Nothingness has been vanquished; in its place, somethingness, for the black which defeated white has for us decomposed into a dusty grey smoke, the smoke of the old world, its cinders daintily landing onto our faces, dropping into our open mouths like birdshit: another M. wrote in a suicide note that love’s boat has crashed against the everyday. Our revolution, our victory, our victory, has proven to be only a victory over nothingness; against somethingness (sachlichkeit?) we struggled, and struggle still.

You’re waking up. Your mouth is dry, your apartment drab and filled with trash. Your bicycle squeaks; the air is noxious, this city congested, this country corrupt, this world relentlessly squeezing itself down the drain. Thrown against the everyday, an egg filled with the optimistic milky fluid of life itself trickling down a stony gray pavilion. This grey is not nothing, it is not everything, it is only the knowledge that power is real, and that it hurts, and that every day we are hurting and being hurt, to be sensate. Endless repetition of these actions, an eternal recurrence; it can be considered erotic, fort und da. (The movement of the earth around the sun, the original revolution, is the most repetitive and dependable of all facts).

In the sleepless dark (black?) quiet of my room, I want only you; when I’m buried deep within you, world, I am fantasizing about another. Buried deep within your body, like a grave.

The human is the only perpetual motion machine; driven by our desire, we, particles of the Godhead, emulate the earth, constantly moving along the same ruts, in rings sparkling brilliantly through the white air of the winter. We travel through a house of mirrors; black and white flickering, the grotesque countenance of one’s own face repeated in the faces in the crowd, in the past, in the sodden contents of a plate, in the atmosphere.

World, I love you; world, I am you. I tried to leave you; chains suddenly slipped off, and I launched into the cosmos, only to discover myself once again: this victory was a victory over fucking nothing at all.

EXPERIMENTING NOTHINGNESS Interview with Xie Molin

by Garcia Frankowski

Xie Molin belongs to a group of artist whose work’s raison d’être is to question the possibilities of painting from a universal standpoint. Mixing process and outcome, machine and artist join in to subvert roles and create works that are both aesthetically iconic and part of a continuous philosophical search.

A hundred years after the conception of the first black square

by Kazimir Malevich, questions about the nature of art still linger around us. After the ironic commodification of abstract works of art, the true potential of non-objectivity remains today deeply misunderstood. As part of a critical look at the centenary of the Black Square and the conception of the Readymade (marking the first victory over nothingness) we’re looking into the powerful nothingness of non-objectivity in art.

Garcia Frankowski interviews Xie Molin

Xie Molin Line Study No. 3 Marker on Paper 55 x 65 cm 2006

Garcia Frankowski: We wanted to start this conversation by asking you about your background and about when you started getting involved with art. Can you tell us from which city of China do you come from and how did you came to study art?

Xie Molin: I was born in Wenzhou, a city South-East of China, in the Zhejiang Province. The city is famous in China for having a lot of small factories where people can run small businesses.

I was born in 1979. Both my parents were factory workers.

When I was 10, new governmental reforms took place and a lot of people who used to work in big factories quit their job to open their own businesses and built their own smaller factories. So when I was a kid, I grew up in the surroundings of homemade factories and small businesses, either of manufacturing, or glass making, printing matter, etc. Some of these smaller factories only had one machine per business. At that time, my mom started a business of her own selling steel panels for all kind of other different enterprises who needed it to make their own products, for example if they were making furniture, locks or auto parts.

Since I was 7, every weekend I was taking drawing classes.

When I went to Middle School my dad asked me if I still wanted to study art and I said yes. Then he helped me to find a better teacher who graduated from the China Academy of Art. Actually he had studied in a high school in Beijing attached to the school of CAFA. So when I was 15 years olds, after studying three years with him, I decided to take the entree exam for this CAFA attached high school. Then in 1995 I moved to Beijing to study during four years and graduated in 1999. After that I entered at the

CAFA Mural Department and studied there for another four years.

I found my time at the CAFA attached high school very interesting and inspiring, because every morning we had art classes for four hours; the first two years for three days a week and the last two years for five days a week, so the education was mainly about art! The library was also very good with a lot of good art books. I think it’s probably still one of the best libraries of art in China and a lot of scholars from abroad refer to it.

During that period, we studied history of western art until Modernism as well as traditional Chinese Art history. We also learned calligraphy and different traditional Chinese techniques.

But then when I went to CAFA, the same courses happened again! So I got fed up. I was a little bit disappointed to see that it was the same training. For me it was too much about live drawing, I didn’t feel any special excitement or inspiration. My goal was to become an artist, but I found out that this education didn’t allow you to become an independent artist. So I had to do efforts for and by myself. Then I rented a small apartment and started doing different small experiments.

Was it in this flat that you first started to experiment using this form of technology to paint?

Yes, I started with acrylic paint. At that time, I didn’t have a goal either than playing with the paint, and experimenting different styles, from expressionism, to abstract or figurative. I also tried different materials, and started to test using the computer as well.

I remember I went to a design show called Get It Louder in 2005, and it was the first time that I saw a lot of designers, who were my age, and who had just graduated from CAFA, using computers and printing out their works. At the same time, some of my classmates were presenting oil paintings. I found that when you put it all together, the oil paintings looked lost there. The paintings had lost their qualities shown in front of the asymmetrical and strong shapes of the design works. But I think that paintings shouldn’t look old or weak even in a contemporary context.

I had my first computer since 2000 and I was starting to use programs to try to connect them with my work. In my second year at university, I started to draw some works on the computer, but I didn’t know yet how to output them. I thought that the result using an Ink-jet printer was too ugly, too dry, with no pigment quality. Although the computer brought very strong possibilities, the Ink-jet printer cancelled them. I wanted something from a machine, from a computer, but still related to painting. So in 2003, after graduating from CAFA, I studied English while keeping working on my works. I discovered new possibilities with the plotter machine. I invented a special process that allowed me to work using stencil techniques enabling me to make the plotter and the paintwork together.

So was it the first time in your practice that you were able to bring somehow what was in the computer back to reality, to a special materiality close to painting? Were you still in China then?

Yes, it was in 2004. I graduated from CAFA in 2003 so I produced those works the year after.

At that moment were you already showing your works in exhibitions? Or was this period more about reflecting upon yourself and finding a medium which would allow you to keep on exploring?

At that time, I only showed in exhibitions organized by the school. In 2003 and 2004, I also joined friends who did a small group show in CAFA Art Gallery, when the gallery was still in Wangfujing, but what I showed there

was different type of works, even if I was already thinking about exploring different processes, different ways of paintings and different materials.

So at that point your interest was more into process, painting and materials? In a way were you already interested since the beginning in not pursuing figurative works? Did you conceive your work as evolving towards something more abstract?

At the beginning I had done some figurative work but the figurative part in my work became less and less obvious.

Can you tell us about the transition between finishing school, the year after when you kept on experimenting a lot and what made you eventually move to study in Edinburgh? How was that period like? What were you thinking? What were you looking for?

Actually I was looking for a special process for making paintings. I wanted to find a way that was not just directly mixing the paint onto the canvas, but more about inventing a particular method to manipulate my works. I always found process very important. I think that how you paint is much more important than the painting in itself, because when you have this special thinking in your process, the result becomes special too. So I started to concentrate on the process much more than on the result. Of course every time you have to check the outcome, the result is still very important. But trying, experimenting is much more interesting than the result for me.

So that was in the period 2003, 2004? And then you moved to Edinburgh in 2005? What made you do that?

After I graduated I wanted to travel abroad to see much more works, shows, just in a way, like when I had moved from Wenzhou to Beijing, but wanting at that time to discover much more.

So was it more out of curiosity? Rather than about studying? More about discovering new things?

Both, actually. I also wanted to go to Edinburgh to study in the painting department.

Was the education you received there very influential for what you are doing today?

Well, during the first term, the first three months, I haven’t brought to Edinburgh the machine I had experimented with. But after those three months, I found out how my classmates were practicing; everyone had developed their own interest. My previous educational background, which had been mainly figurative, hadn’t emphasized on the personal interest of the students. But I found that what I had developed beside on my own and for myself, worked very well for me.

So during the first three months you had to work in a very different way?

Yes, the first three months I didn’t know what to do! I wasn’t prepared; I didn’t know what the educational system in Europe was like. But when I got there, I found out that a lot of the training I had done and developed for myself was a good support for what I wanted to do in my postgraduate studies. So I decided to spend half of my grant to buy a plotter machine and to ship it to Edinburgh. Then I used it as my research tool during my two years of study.

Do the projects you kept on developing in Scotland were following the works you had started in Beijing before that?

Yes, I didn’t change the process of my paintings. But when I was in China, I didn’t have my own machine. I had to find small shops to cut out the pat-

terns for me. But in Edinburgh, I had my own machine so I could play more with different possibilities. My paintings were based on these cut patterns.

Before I had to have the patterns cut out of vinyl. But then I discovered a particular paper and continued to work with this paper. With these changes, I had much more possibilities, I could experiment much more and also I chose this machine so I could start to do drawings with it.

Were you also drawing with this machine? But that was not with paint?

No, that was with pencils or also with pens in the machine.

How long was the period when you were making this?

This was done in 2006. After the two years studying in Edinburgh I felt more confident about my works.

Was there something special which happened to make you feel confident or was it just you getting more comfortable with your works? Did you get a lot of positive feedback from other people while you were affirming your practice?

I found that my practice didn’t have any big gaps in strength or consistency.

Also, I have received several awards from the school for this type of works but also for my paintings.

Were you still also developing figurative works?

When I came back from Scotland I was still developing the same kind of works, as well as keeping on trying to do drawings. At that time, I also tried to use Chinese Ink and Chinese brushes with the machine, but I didn’t pursue this direction and came back to the initial process.

But the process gradually changed because I was not fully satisfied with the work. During two years, from 2007 to 2009, I tested different tools but also tried to developed new machines.

When I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art, we were asked to make a project book to explain what we had done during the two years of studies. So I explained what I had done with this project and how I got inspired from the plotter. I explained that I wanted to develop much more painting machines.

So in the years that followed was there a significant shift from what you were doing and what you can define as what has become the particularity of your practice? Was there a point where you could finally discard something you didn’t like? Was there a point that you said ok, that’s the direction I’ll choose to focus on from now on? And when did that happened?

I think that the turning point for me was when I decided to ask my friends to buy this machine that I would ship to Scotland.

I should also explain that when I was in Europe I saw a lot of art exhibitions... That was a big influence for me, because in China it was more difficult to see works in person, especially of contemporary artists.

Were there any shows in particular which stroked you most?

In 2006, I travelled to see the Berlin Bienniale and visited the Hamburger Bahnhof. There were a lot of famous artists exhibited there: Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, etc. But it was so much to see that I missed the 2nd floor!

But even if I had only a few minutes to see it, one work really caught my attention. I found it very impressive; it was a work by Ian Monroe. His work had a very strong impact on me because of the quality of it. It was so fine, for me it was chocking!

Of course there were a lot of other shows I saw and which I

liked. Before coming to Europe, I didn’t realize the deep relationship existing between modern references and contemporary art, until I was able to face physically the works of different periods. Like how Cezanne started, then Picasso, then Surrealism, Mondrian and all these different movements. I discovered that to see all these different works and all these different movements in art history helped me to realize what should I do for my future as an artist.

So was this confrontation with the real oeuvres d’art as influential for you as the studies in a different educational context?

To see the history of art with my own eyes, confirmed what was important for my practice. For me it is fundamental to connect to the time where you live in and to the techniques of your own epoch. This is very important for the work you develop. So I had to build the relation between my work and my time.

Yes, that’s what you explained in your catalog, how the Zeitgeist is valuable in your work and how to understand the spirit of your time. When you came back and you started working again, how did your art developed? How did your relationship with contemporary art in China developed? The medium of representation you created is not the most common here, neither working with abstract works. Was it challenging? Did you find some echo in the environment when you started to present your paintings?

When I came back to China, they saw the works I had developed in Edinburgh. They were interested in them, but with apprehensions. But in a way, I wasn’t neither fully satisfied with those works at that time. Visitors, people who look at your paintings cannot see how it was made, but when I came back from Scotland I started to think how I could show the process and the different techniques behind the work. My old work appeared to me very flat and the material wasn’t textured enough. I wanted it to be stronger. I knew I needed to keep on. That is why I started to use different tools.

Up to that point were you sure that you were working in the good direction?

No, I wasn’t sure. But even now I’m not sure!

So when did you feel you were going in a better direction?

It was in 2008. When the earthquake in Sichuan Province happened, Fang Fang the director of Star Gallery decided to make a show to sell the works in order to help to support the construction of new primary schools. So Wang Guangle and me, and a lot of different artists, donated a piece. I had done a new piece for it, which symbolized a new level in my work. I finished it the night before the opening, but the quality I wanted to achieve was there!

It was still a little figurative. I took a picture of a scaffolding, used the plotter to cut it out in sticky paper, pasted the pattern to the canvas, poured the acrylic paint, then ploughed the paint with a saw I bought from B&Q and at last tore the paper with the paint on it. Working with saws was very much a handmade process at that time but I realized its new visual possibilities.

Since I used these new tools instead of a brush I discovered new alternatives to connect to the machine. So after several pieces following this process, I was able to find a much longer saw. But after that I had to find a factory to make the machines, for size reasons. And because I didn’t have any mechanical knowledge, I had to learn while communicating with

the different people.

Then in 2009, I finished a new machine. But the quality and the structure of the machine were still not perfect. I still was able to use it and explore different prospects with it until 2011, when I made another machine. In May 2011, I made my first solo show at Space Station, exhibiting works developed with those two machines. After that, I started to sell.

A the same time, I showed in a group show in Boers Li Gallery, then in November, in a group show also in Pace Gallery. Subsequently, the Beijing Commune decided to represent me. So in 2012, I did my second solo show at the Beijing Commune.

All the recent works exposed were made by the latest machine.

Do you feel that eventually you could shift again to other tools?

What are you looking for now? What are the current questions you are trying to answer?

Currently I’m experimenting with a special color called Interference color.

In the context of the one hundred year anniversary of disappearing painting, would it be a search for when the machine would reach a certain point in which it doesn’t need you anymore, would it be like the disappearance of the artist almost? You started first by cutting machine, then looking for different tools; it seemed that the machine acquired every time more protagonist, taking more a leading role. It’s also each time a bigger machine and the machine becomes more and more involved in the process. Do you think there would be a point where the artist wouldn’t be there anymore and the machine would be able to do it? Would that be a goal you would be looking for?

No, I don’t think so. Without me the machine is only a machine, it’s not able to do anything.

Of course the intelligence of doing it remains to the artist. But are you thinking of trying to develop the machine to become more autonomous, for example, so you would have less to input by hand?

Or are you still going to keep on about the physical relationship between you and the machine, a process where your hand it’s still present? Is it something that you are questioning?

Yes, I would question wherever it’s possible without my physical input. The direction isn’t set so obviously, if it happens it would be more naturally.

As you also expressed your interest in showing things that are hidden, not always shown to the public when confronted to the art pieces, in your latest show in the Beijing Commune you exhibited not only your paintings but you also had an installation on the floor, would it be something you want to experiment more?

Revealing the other side of the artistic production?

Yes, it’s always on my mind... The question of how the reality has affected my work or me is something I’m interested in bringing to the gallery. For me, that’s the contrast between painting and the social reality, but I don’t know yet how this question can be illustrated in my work.

Every time that I take the train and that I see the landscape changes in China, it impacts me a lot. In ancient China, the philosophy was mainly about respecting the nature, but now people lost this respect. The mentality has changed a lot; they build gigantic buildings and infrastructures. Before people thought that nature was big and the human being was small, but nowadays it seems like the contrary, people believe that they are bigger than nature!

Die Wahrnehmung verringert sich mit der Distanz zur Gegenwart.

Aoto Oouchi, 2010

SUPERFOLDING Garcia Frankowski

The Baroque does not refer to an essence, but rather to an operative function, to a characteristic. It endlessly creates folds. It does not invent the thing: there are all folds that come from the Orient—Greek, Roma, Romanesque, Gothic, Classical folds‌But it twists and turns the folds, takes them to infinity, fold upon fold, fold after fold.

-Gilles Deleuze, The Fold

FOLDING STORY

No.8 Superfold: Connective Multiplicities or Coiling Ad Infinitum November 29, 2014 Vega Zaishi Wang Ren Zhitian Meng Zhigang Marianna Ignataki Ophelia S. Chan

The Superfold is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As with the fold, with its twists and turns, coils and bents, its performative (dis)continuality has the capacity to connect on a single surface a plethora of multiplicities. Either metaphysical or material, in the form of a textile labyrinth or as the endless projection of images, the fold can outline topographical cartographies of rizhomatic relations as connective tissue of history and visual information. The artwork and the work of art (as in the production of the artwork) act as both as signifier and signified, codifiers and decoders of processes that are then revealed as a network of connections of multiplicities and episodes, as extensions of surfaces and cognitive relations.

In its superlative function, the Superfold explores surface extension, albeit in all directions. The Superfold is the folds magnified. It is simultaneously folded as sensuous device, as time-space machine, as performative recording, as historico-epistemological coiling, as philosophical cloth. The Superfold extends in different forms, from the folding cloth over furniture of Meng Zhigang, to the hypothetical bottom layer of naked female skin potentially covered by sensuous clothes conceived by Vega Zaishi Wang, the washed-out covers and advertising pages of fashion magazines of Ren Zhitian, the machinist images projected into space into a cache of assemblages of enunciation of Ophelia S. Chan, and the Deleuzean dialectical historic-epistemological folds of the baroque dresses worn by a headless woman in Marianna Ignataki’s work.

Folding in and out of itself, the exhibition creates an extended territory that bends and turns, twists and loops far beyond the contained reach of the physical limits of the gallery, folding into an endless Superfold.

Like the rizhome the fold multiplies within and outside its own ever-expanding form, whether this form is this text that folds and unfolds as the exhibition folds and unfolds taking the form of a precise topographical coordinate where artwork and concept are intertwined as magazine covers and rice paper are repeatedly submitted to the methodical labyrinth of repetitive actions, unequivocally revealing process-driven folds of paper crumbled by the inexorable grasp of manual labour and worn down pages of printed media whose aesthetic prowess has outlasted the predetermined usage of its initial state either as paper sheet or as pure form without any other function than that of being an artwork that is independently from the fact that it still questions the previous folds of the fold, because the fold has the freedom of discarding usefulness or it can become a cloth that hides a secret within the framework of a painting, proclaiming through a sublime code the speechless essence of a state of mind that requires clothing to reveal itself, a state of mind that is willing to show itself by means of the cloth that envelops its body, whether this body is unrecognizable and its completely denied by the presence of the cloth, or if the body is enhanced by the fabric it supports, whether as representation or as physical device while creating an image that folds in multiple directions affecting the mind and the body of the subject under these clothes or the subject that overlooks this dialectic of body and cloth as extension of the body while acknowledging that the body is always subject of multiple forms of interpretation, and these forms of interpretation are enhanced by the devices, vehicles and tools used to understand them, either being analogous devices or activated by the use of digital technologies that can create new pathways for the fold to unfold, projecting through the topos of space and time (time as performance and time as historical reference) creating a flexible cartography of an ever expanding surface.

THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE Jacob Dreyer

The contrast was striking: while the photograph showed only a soup of more or less uniform green sprinkled with vague blue spots, the map developed a fascinating maze of departmental and scenic roads, viewpoints, forests, lakes and cols. Above the two enlargements, in black capital letters, was the title of the exhibition: THE MAP IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE TERRITORY. -Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory

No.7 The Map and The Territory: Ontological Boundaries October 18, 2014 Sofia Borges Camille Ayme Vessna Perunovich Zhou Fan Kang Haitao Troyka Union Olga Rodina Lena Tsibizova Anastasia Soboleva

Michel Houllebecq’s La Carte et le Territoire can be read as a sad elegy of the modern project. If several decades ago, structured by the logic of ideological conflict, we discussed ‘post-modernity,’ it was always a bit insecure, the manifesto of a generation insistent that their subject position was unique. Today, we can only look at the modern with nostalgia; the modern, a period in which it was believed that the human race was perfectible, and that utopia was attainable, is no more than a faint and slightly childish memory. Chateaubriand, De Maistre, Tocqueville, Retif de la Bretonne, Balzac, Hugo, and above all Proust; there was a trajectory in Houellebecq’s home country in which cartography and the literary impulse were inextricably intertangled, one that began with the moment of revolution and ended in solitary meditation in a cork-lined room. The numerous landscapes of the modern world: the American savages and those of the urban ghetto, the frozen canals of the totalitarian urban monument and the barricades of a great revolution, the slow and tortuous voyage down the paths of the self: these, and many others, were the scenes of the modern.

When Houllebecq sends a character he has named after himself to the countryside to reread Chateaubriand (and subsequently, Jed Martin to a similar ancestral terroir) he is merely describing the desire for a less overdetermined world; a landscape of purity and authenticity, in which actions have significance, a retreat into a soothing world of certainties and adventures. Today, we inhabit an urban space indistinguishable from spectacle, and that the possibility of authentic subjectivity is already past. We feel the self to be surrounded by endless layers of ultimately flimsy social matter; everywhere we look, we see our own reflection, mocking our inability to transcend selfhood, capitalism, the city, and a variety of other, synonymous conditions.

In suggesting this forgotten terroir as authentic, however, Houllebecq may be showing his own naivete. The landscape is always stitched up by our imagination, and by the structuring logics of architecture and other forms of language. After all, to perceive a landscape at all takes as its prerequisite a sense of the self as separated from earth- realized as an intellect. Rather than being a universal condition, this very peculiar state of affairs- the ability to perceive a landscape- is part of the project of modernity- there is a reason why Houllebecq turns to Chateaubriand, whose search begins with the revolution which dislodged him from his own fixed social position.

The desire to identify a landscape is motivated, above all, by homelessness; the landscape that is seen is more product of one’s desire than a real place. When, for example, Japanese intellectuals were forced to perceive their home territory as landscape for the first time, it was felt as trauma, resulting in suicide for many . (Of course, the primary reason for this discovery of the self- and the concurrent discovery of a world external, juxtaposed or even dialectically opposed to the self, was economic; in lieu of a homeland, mountains of coal, valleys suitable for traintracks, and terrains to be transformed by the logic of urban planning were seen). The result is that which we call “the built environment.” The moment of alienation from our environment is the moment that, rubbing our eyes, we begin to perceive “landscape;” those architects, writers, and painters who concern themselves with landscape are, perhaps, trying to imagine the path out of themselves, and back into the fold of a collective life.

Camille Ayme Driver Passenger Video Installation Screenshot 2010

A TRUTH BURNING IN YOUR ART Garcia Frankowski

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

-Ludwig Wittgentsein, The Blue Book, 1933-34 Here begins a laughter containing philosophical truth, which we must call to mind again if only because today everything is bent on making us forget how to laugh.

–Peter Sloterdijk

<蛋悠悠>

Chen Xi / 陈熹

No.6 Softcore: Subverted Superstructure and the Systemic Sublime August 2, 2014 Aspartime Roman Mokrov Ilona Sagar Doubleluckiness Tom Kemp Alessandro Roldandi Zhang Zheyi

Like the work of a philosopher, the work of art often aims at raising questions rather than strictly looking for answers. Sometimes those questions take a twist, and sometimes they transform into provocations of thought.

Philosophical questions can turn jokes or juxtaposed narratives, laughter and tears, confusion and excitement, emotions, all products of these twists and turns, into the fuel that moves the vehicle of critical transcendence. As Diogenes deciding to reveal the experience of the corporeal in the market place for the public to see, the work of art can also provoke by revealing what is both obvious and intimate.

Peter Sloterdijk argues in Critique of Cynical Reason (1983) that the friction generated by the act of exposing or publicizing something “implies the unified act of showing and generalizing (the semantic system of art is based on this)”, an act of challenging like a “cheeky neckline, which reveals naked female skin” playing with the power exerted by the rare over the commonplace.

Softcore: Subversed Superstructure and the Systemic Sublime aims at exposing the artworld’s cheeky neckline, as if to inviting through the sensuous skin of self-consciousness and self criticism to publicize— that is, to reveal—discomfort with the status quo. The exhibition has Diogenisian ambitions. Half provocation, half critical statement, it presents works that through humor and irony aim at making visible what has become scarcely accessible.

Projects question roles, and unmask the ideology latent in the apparatus of the status quo. Nothing is sacred in this “foretaste” of epistemological violence.

The ceremonial, the quotidian, the exceptional, the commonplace, the underlying and the sublime are pulled together by exacerbating forces that won’t desist until their goal is accomplished. The goal is to reveal, to dissect. Softcore is a theoretical machine that questions and asks to be questioned by means of photographs, videos, installations, paintings, but also through texts, data and by way of the interaction between all the acting agents that constitute the event of the art exhibition. 去看看青青河畔草，凑过去闻闻绵绵蕾丝香吧，这里被铲掉的艺术和留 下的艺术达到一种令人冥想的平衡。作品的色彩与材质混合出幽深迷人 的氛围，洋溢着比经典观念艺术更加现成的趣味。通过素颜的作品来表 达一个可读的反抗，结果常常是各自即兴发挥。从嘲笑动物园的生态系 统到进入动物园，需要的风要凄凉的，蛋蛋要软的，痛苦要孤独的，露 点要向着高处的，轻肌弱骨要让自己摔碎的，感官过载到微微红，相思 物爱玲珑，如凤求凰，最终黄花比人瘦。要么奇觉要么顺服要么做局， 算钱。这是一个关于对着艺术微笑的故事，在那个故事里，微笑不能解 决问题，但微笑可以解决你 。

SEMIOTIC ELEGY Garcia Frankowski

What is the meaning of a word?

Let us attack this question by asking first; what is an explanation of the meaning of a word?

What does the explanation of a word look like?

-Ludwig Wittgentsein, The Blue Book, 1933-34

MUTE WORDS Guido Tesio

Semiotic There is no world without an image of the world. Words, pictures, object are all devices that help us to create a mental image of our environment.

For that which is concrete and visible, and also for the abstract and imaginary. While Wittgenstein’s aphorism the “limits of your language means the limits of your world” appears to be enough to explain how we come to understand things, we should not forget that language comes in all sorts of forms and mediums, from the spoken word to the moving image.

Preoccupations This exhibition was born out of the necessity to address a semiotic preoccupation. How to present artworks that speak about the process through which we come to understand meaning? How to curate different mediums in the search of an image of the world that becomes only visible through objects signs and symbols? More specifically, how to present works that deal with the very specific desire to express that which cannot be expressed by any other means except the ones used? How to discuss questions about the ways we communicate ideas? How to present vehicles of inquiry? How to offer visual explanations of meaning? (...)

1. “Semiotic Preoccupations” focuses on objects, images and signs as vehicles of multiple meaning.

Pain can be exposed. It can’t be explained.

2. Tackling the work of art’s double nature as a mean of expression and as an instrument for a deeper understanding of the world, the exhibition explores - and exposes - one of the main contradictions that lie at the very bottom of mass mediatic society; the ambiguous relationship between communication and knowledge.

No.5 Semiotic Preoccupations: Object, Signs and Symbols June 29, 2014

3. The “preoccupation”of the curators refers to the possibility - or the impossibility - for the work of art to build a discourse that extends beyond mere objectuality. In a world that has definitely abandoned universal and collective visions in the name of multiplicity - where also communication has been reduced to an autistic performance - we tweet we don’t write to each other any more - can a work of art provide the conditions for some sort of collective meaning to temporarily appear?

Pascal Meccariello Ren Zhitian Alena Olasyuk Johan Nijhoff Celine Lamee Jason Mena

4. As a fragment of a possibly meaningful discourse, like numbers of a password we are unable to decode, each work alludes to a totality of meaning that remains absent, cosmologies that can only be intuited.

Without trying to command, explain, exhaust the totality of life but offering instead insight in its changing character, each object, image or sign manifests and clarify an immanence that will always be different.

5. “Semiotic Preoccupations” recognizes the complexity of life and the elusiveness of totality, exploring our awareness of the constitutive lack of resolvability of life to fuel our desire for resolution.

CRITICAL IMPORTANCE Felix Cruz Marcos

If I could describe it with words I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.

-Lewis Hine

In his “Introduction to social Anthropology” Marvin Harris points out that every human language possesses universal semantic capacity. Contrary to opinions held for centuries, consequence of a shallow application of the Darwinian theories to the cultural sphere, this dissertation illustrates how languages with a rich written tradition (classical Greek, Chinese, Latin or German) play on a level field with those almost extinct tongues whose tradition has already disappeared.

The studies conducted by professor J.H.Bodley among the Campa Indians in the mid twentieth century further reinforce this view. Beholding the rhetorical contests given among this people, Bodley was startled by the beauty and richness of speeches delivered by illiterate men. He noted down the rhetoric figures employed by the speakers, counting up to fourteen classical figures. Separated by thousands of miles and years, the Campa speaker and Homer have no advantage over the other.

When we extend our vision to the languages of Art, to the Media, we find shocking examples of a parallel situation. Being no more than established human languages, painting, sculpture, architecture, graffiti, all of them possess universal semantic capacity. Every idea, every feeling can be conveyed in every Media. The example of classical masters, from Buonarotti to Picasso is of an outstanding value. Be it in a grotto, canvas or in San Pietro dei Vaticano, Miguel Angel never stops being a sculptor. And Picasso is always the multiplicity, the superposition, the exploded time frame, in collage, in bronze, everywhere.

But. There is indeed a relevance of the critical Media. It is not in the Media. It is in the critical part. Critical understood in its physic connotation, the necessary amount of a compound A to generate a reaction B.

No.4 The Relevance of the Critical Medium May 24, 2014 Geoff Overheu Ren Bo Wu Yang Vinzenz Reinecke Coco Esteve

No written report can stop a war. But a photographic series of an improvised summary execution of a “suspected” sniper stopped one in the seventies. Different Medias deliver the message with different intensity and speed to our brain. We all stand patiently muzzak we dislike at elevators. It is hard to imagine that we could tolerate with the same resignation other disagreeable stimulus; a smell, a corpse of a long time dead dog. Even if anybody with musical education will rate equal the quality of both stimuli.

Even more; as there are messages to be delivered that depend completely on the speed and intensity of the deliverance we can infer that there are messages that require, that can only exist in certain media. As with the Minotaur that Picasso built out of a bicycle seat; how can you express the primitivism underlying the mass production culture otherwise?

In the present exhibition at Intelligentsia Gallery five artists bring together a reflection about the art in the fringes of the media. We are invited to enter this fertile no men’s land holding their hands. They didn’t create this extension of the human spirit. But their critical approach to the media may as well open new paths for our shared understanding.

Bon voyage.

AS FAR AS THE EYES CAN SEE Sophie Salamon

The field of vision has always seemed to me comparable to the ground of the archaeological excavation.

-Paul Virilio

No.3 Dialectical Territories: Landscapes and Abstraction April 20, 2014 Troyka Union Olga Rodina Anastasia Soboleva Lena Tsibizova Li Wei Laura Gil Santana Garcia Frankowski

Dialectical Territories presents works dealing with the intersection of photography and abstraction; a compelling field that explores spheres between the external world and subjective vision, reframing landscapes through a series of straight lines and geometrical planes. This kind of abstracted practice, in conjunction with the minimalist installations presented in the exhibition, exposes us to the ambiguously simple procedures that operate within our minds; constituting the dualism between observing and viewing, reception and reaction.

It has been argued that straight lines do not exist, that they are an over-simplified illusion generated by our brain’s capacity for spatial reasoning, and that this process of perceiving boundaries is conditioned by the type of physical environment we inhabit, imposing itself onto our most basic modes of conceptualization. Precisely this tension can be effectively visualized and communicated through the medium of photography; a practice that introduced a kind of mechanized, artificial distance, enabling us to reconsider who or what the subject(ive) is.

Simply put, straight lines allow us to perceive outlines, to distinguish between the ‘end’ of object A and the ‘beginning’ of object B, translating them into Subject A and Subject B. Indeed, daily life is saturated with the straight line, there is the interplay between light and shadow, there is human effort resulting in the intricate geometries of the spaces we inhabit, the technology we use; and yet the line remains illusory, allusive - an illusion of control and categorization. So where does the mechanism reside that tricks us into seeing the straight line - wanting to see it - yearning for this conditioned clarity of shape and boundary?

Spatial reasoning aside, the eye is our innate camera obscura, projecting an interpretation of reality onto the brain, imbuing it with meaning through personal memory and experience. Constantly consuming images, angles, shapes, colours - the eye tirelessly converts these into electrical impulses, weaving the visual into the visceral. As photography concocts visualized abstractions of light impulses on a screen, we are confronted with the processes of simplification and categorization that operate within our mind. Often too readily consumed, this kind of image perception is what art critic Jonathan Crary refers to as ‘subjective vision’ - a process of conceptualization that came to its fore with the dawning of the 19th Century.

It is difficult to assess the complicated relationship between viewer and viewed, no less so in the realm of photography. However, what may be said with some certainty is that the viewer invariably influences that which is viewed, imposing on it a subjective vision, smothering it with subjective narratives. Each individual observer will make use of his or her customized set of memories and experiences in order to decode that which lies ahead, both temporally and visually. This premise is at the core of Crary’s concept.

The intersection between photography and abstraction has the potential to push its audience beyond the passivity of such experiential processes, opening up a sphere for self reflective discourse, provoking the artifice of the (re)presented into allowing us to experience critical immersion. Distance (re)creates criticality. This is conceptual distance from nature as embodied in the abstract expression that layers itself atop an image, the effect and consequence of which can be observed in some of the landscapes presented in Dialectical Territories.

Thus, it is this artificially created distance that enables us to (re) connect, to come closer - not to the world but to the subjective vision that imbues simple electrical impulses in our brain with unique meaning; dismantling the deceptive simplicity of the straight line and exposing modes of conceptualization within us and without us.

Olga Rodina Karelia 2012

TROYKA UNION Olga Rodina Lena Tsibizova Anastasia Soboleva

We are people of the eighties, who witnessed in their childhood and youth the change of epochs, the fall of the Iron curtain, the introduction of market economy and the attempt of Russia to join the international community. We witnessed the rapid transformation of the society, as well as the never-ending increase in data traffic, that determines copying and absorbing different information as necessary conditions of development.

We are one of the first Russian generations with a cross-cultural identity, who became the true result of the globalization. We are young, sophisticated and ambitious. We are interested in everything new, but we also want to know our roots.

Our project is a cultural and ethnographic research performed in different parts of Russia. We go back to our roots, learn our traditions and get to know the everyday life of â&#x20AC;&#x153;timekeepersâ&#x20AC;?. While away from home, we realized our unity with the characters we chose thanks to the shared roots, language and elation. To cut it short, despite all differences, we can understand each other.

In future we are eager to continue our exploration of Russia and post-Soviet territories, solving the issues of cultural and epoch interaction in present context (both from Russian and global perspectives). We are interested in past-present-future eclecticism. We hope that eventually we will be able to understand Russian authenticity and authenticity of the Russians, including ourselves. We Are Troyka Union

Lena Tsibizova Murmansk 2013

Anastasia Soboleva Penza 2013

NOTHING BUT A ROOM

Hermeneutics of a Room is an open discussion about the deep nature of space, located in the Intelligentsia Gallery, crystallized in the exhibition of five different creators.

Felix Cruz Marcos

Camille Ayme opens the exhibition with a series of portraits. Linked to her explorations on the fringes of contemporary society, diverse isolated individuals appear to us in a diverse domestic space. Most of them are young. The common denominator between them is an indefinable sense of intimacy. The sensual photographs of Ayme tell us a simple truth. We understand those rooms through these people that inhabit them. Through their clothes, their expressions. The human body is therefore our Rosetta Stone in this voyage, in its manifold manifestations.

Simona Rota contributes to the exhibition with part of her greatly acclaimed series “Big Exit”. In deeply balanced compositions a body escapes from a room. Rota sharply captures the divine moment in which our guide, the human body, evaporates. It moves not out but somewhere else. A white skirted woman that tries to reach the dark hole above a door. A young female absorbed by a mirrored garbage can. There is no notion of exterior space, or of an adjoining hall. Her escapes have a magical condition of disappearances.

No.2 Hermeneutics of a Room March 1, 2014 Matjaz Tancic Simona Rota Meng Zhigang Camille Ayme James Ronner

Two large canvases by Meng Zhigang continue the thread of the discussion. Both belong to his series of naked interiors. Constructed from extensively furnished pictures, these vibrant interiors convey the imprint left by its material inhabitants. They are not the deserted images of a building before its opening to the public, the soulless images of architectonic pornography. They, in subtle shadows, in barely perceptible lights, give us back the pure atmosphere, the presence, of those or that which dwells there. Like a woman’s scent. Like a disappearing echo of footsteps walking calmly away.

From the charged primeval nakedness of these canvases we reach our next stop. Matjaz Tancic brings us back to the populated complexity, in his 3D photos of domestic interiors, taken in Anhui province. The extreme detail that this media captures portrays a sense of hyper-reality, an augmented dimension, exploding in its abundance. Contrasting with this exuberance, the composition of the pictures is extremely hieratic, like a bas-relief. Is this a hint towards the solid core of space, to the immutable essence of habited rooms, beyond the reach of technological multiplications?

James Ronner closes the exhibition with a final observation through materialism. His work presented here is different in media and nature to all the rest. So is the disposition. Over a stacking of concrete blocks a wooden bench emerges. Over it, several handmade glass pieces stand. They are made out of reclaimed whisky bottles, so the embossing is still visible on the borders. These delicate pieces narrate the way we try to domesticate space. How we colonize it. After all the brutality of a society of mass production has passed we are allowed to go back to a room, to shelter from the noise. And from the remains of that material culture (serially produced bottles) cast as beautiful glass, we can differentiate that shelter from a bunker, and say in an unmistakable tone – “Yes, of course, this is nothing but a room.”

A SINCERE START Hao Chen

“Experiments on form” shows a mix of pristine and sophisticated quality.

It seems like a hail to Malevich at first glimpse; yet it actually departs from the 1910s’ Suprematist, and shifts the meaning of the black creations. They are no longer individual paintings or objects once they are placed in this certain room, which subvert the way we experience Black Square.

Admittedly, we can spend hours discussing the ideas and techniques in these art pieces. How they draw black on black reminding us of the white on white; how they oscillate between the three-dimension and flatness; how they reverse the darkness between objects and their shadows.

However, the most intriguing quality I find in the exhibition is the space as a whole piece. The backdrop is not a canvas, a wall, a decent museum, but a small anonymous room somewhere in Beijing. The space is so confined and basic that everything gets more concentrated and interrelated; thus, the richness could emerge in the limitation with only few pieces at play.

This condensed experience and experimental character has always been rooted in art, but somehow missing in high culture today. That’s why we appreciate the sincerity and primitivity the exhibition conveys ,which will be a powerful attitude fueling the Intelligentsia Gallery in the long run.

真诚的起点 陈昊

“形式实验“体现出原初与复杂的混合。他初看像是对Malevich的致敬； 实则脱离了20世纪初的至上主义，并改变了黑色创造物的意义。当这 些创作被置于这个特定房间的时候，他们不再是单独的绘画或是物件， 他们颠覆了我们过去对“黑色方块”的体验。 诚然我们可以花很久讨论这些作品背后的思想和技巧。讨论他们如何以 黑色上的黑色让我们联想起白色上的白色，讨论作品是怎样在三维和扁 平中摇摆，讨论他们怎样倒置了物体与其阴影的关系。 然而，展览最吸引我的特点在于，将其空间作为一件作品的整体来看 待。作品的背景不是画布、墙、体面的博物馆，而是隐匿于北京某处一 个匿名狭小的房间。这个空间如此基本而局限，使每个物体都变得更为 集中和相关，而丰富性就得以通过很少的几件作品在有限的空间中产生 出来。这种浓缩的体验和实验的特征长久以来存在于艺术之中，而在当 今的高雅艺术中却有所缺失。我们因而欣赏展览传递出的真诚与原初 感，它们将使智先画廊走的更远。

BLACK ON WHITE Guido Tesio

I. (Premise) INTELLIGENTSIA is a small gallery with big ambitions.

INTELLIGENTSIA is not a private archive and showcase for artistic production, but a gathering place for confrontation.

EXPERIMENTS ON FORM is the opening exhibition of INTELLIGENTSIA.

No.1 Experiments on Form Jan. 25, 2014 Garcia Frankowski

Like every opening exhibition EXPERIMENTS ON FORM plays a special role in the definition of the artistic agenda of its curators, being somehow expected to set the path for upcoming events.

EXPERIMENTS ON FORM paradigmatically manifests the intentions of Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski. (...)

HAVE A REST

Alessandro Rolandi 李山 But now travelers are traveled. Dreamers are dreamed. They are no longer free to move about, they are traveled by the program. They are no longer free to dream, they are dreamed by the program.

-Paul Virilio HAVE A REST is about stopping, HAVE A REST is about the forest, HAVE A REST is about getting off, HAVE A REST is about time, HAVE A REST is about displacement, HAVE A REST is about interrupting, HAVE A REST is about void, HAVE A REST is about staying, HAVE A REST is about departure, HAVE A REST is about remembering, HAVE A REST is about distraction, HAVE A REST is about wandering, HAVE A REST is about anticipating, HAVE A REST is about delay, HAVE A REST is about deception, HAVE A REST is about failure, HAVE A REST is about waiting, HAVE A REST is about distance, HAVE A REST is about intimacy, HAVE A REST is about us, HAVE A REST is about disengaging, HAVE A REST is about reward, HAVE A REST is about space, HAVE A REST is about love, HAVE A REST is about resting, HAVE A REST is about listening, HAVE A REST is about thinking, HAVE A REST is about not thinking, HAVE A REST is about Zen, HAVE A REST is not about Zen, HAVE A REST is about extracting, HAVE A REST is about co-opting, HAVE A REST is about subverting, HAVE A REST is about conforming, HAVE A REST is about controlling, HAVE A REST is about doing nothing, HAVE A REST is about being, HAVE A REST is about not doing, HAVE A REST is about neglecting, HAVE A REST is about indulging, HAVE A REST is about preserving, HAVE A REST is about turning away, HAVE A REST is about losing, HAVE A REST is about claiming, HAVE A REST is about aura, HAVE A REST is about beginning, HAVE A REST is about tasting, HAVE A REST is about everywhere, HAVE A REST is about breathing, HAVE A REST is about here, HAVE A REST is about looking, HAVE A REST is about not seeing, HAVE A REST is about remaining, HAVE A REST is about having a rest, HAVE A REST is about activating, HAVE A REST is about mourning, HAVE A REST is about not being afraid, HAVE A REST is about choosing, HAVE A REST is about being silent, HAVE A REST is about instability, HAVE A REST is about vertigo, HAVE A REST is about being foreigner, HAVE A REST is about seduction, HAVE A REST is about un-compromise, HAVE A REST is about incompatibility, HAVE A REST is about disjunction, HAVE A REST is about evil, HAVE A REST is not about morality, HAVE A REST is about living, HAVE A REST is about protection, HAVE A REST is about changing, HAVE A REST is about the harmonious, HAVE A REST is about the discordant, HAVE A REST is not about lying, HAVE A REST is about dissociating, HAVE A REST is about dismissing, HAVE A REST is about not participating, HAVE A REST is about dropping, HAVE A REST is about letting go, HAVE A REST is about letting be, HAVE A REST is about letting live, HAVE A REST is about the market, HAVE A REST is not about the market, HAVE A REST is about the system, HAVE A REST is not about a system, HAVE A REST is about what is lived, HAVE A REST is about what is concrete, HAVE A REST is about what is existential, HAVE A REST is about risk, HAVE A REST is about necessity, HAVE A REST is about inertia, HAVE A REST is about obscurity, HAVE A REST is about prejudice, HAVE A REST is about repeating, HAVE A REST is about indulging, HAVE A REST is about exile, HAVE A REST is about keeping it nice, HAVE A REST is about power, HAVE A REST is about distance, HAVE A REST is about time, HAVE A REST is about loss, HAVE A REST is about distance, HAVE A REST is about the hollow, HAVE A REST is about the horror, HAVE A REST is about difference, HAVE A REST is about integrity, HAVE A REST is about deceiving, HAVE A REST is about ink, HAVE A REST IS ABOUT breeding, HAVE A REST is about ignorance, HAVE A REST is about pride, HAVE A REST is about missing, HAVE A REST is about violence, HAVE A REST is about hypocrisy, HAVE A REST is about kindness, HAVE A REST is about something, HAVE A REST is about something else, HAVE A REST is about drifting, HAVE A REST is about hiding, HAVE A REST is about protecting, HAVE A REST is about defying, HAVE A REST is about forgiving, HAVE A REST is about mending, HAVE A REST is about ideology, HAVE A REST is about intention, HAVE A REST is about fighting, HAVE A REST is about struggling, HAVE A REST is about compassion, HAVE A REST is about brutality, HAVE A REST is about tenderness, HAVE A REST is about delay, HAVE A REST is about a voice, HAVE A REST is about deserving, HAVE A REST is about coming to terms, HAVE A REST is about fostering, HAVE A REST is about decline, HAVE A REST is about knowing, HAVE A REST is about preparing, HAVE A REST is about forgiving, HAVE A REST is about regret, HAVE A REST is about contempt, HAVE A REST is about transcendence, HAVE A REST is about immanence, HAVE A REST is about the gentle I think there’s something you should know It’s time We stop the show There’s someone We forgot to be I just hope you understand Sometimes the clothes do not make the man George Michael I don’t want the dead to be forgotten but there is a sense in which the way we enforce remembrance produces oblivion The secret is intimacy When we encounter such roots we can be sure that they betray the great antithesis, bigger than life and death, the one the Mysteries try to decode

Writers: Alessandro Rolandi 李山 Annie Yuxie Wang Chen Xi 陈熹 Charles de Cloitre Christopher Rey Perez Felix Cruz Marcos Garcia Frankowski Geisel Cabrera Guido Tesio Hao Chen 陈昊 Jacob Dreyer Lingbo Liu Ophelia S. Chan 陳秀煒 Sophie Salamon Contents:

Intelligentsia Zine No.1 January 2015 Nothingness Editors: Garcia Frankowski Design: Garcia Frankowski Back Cover: Ophelia S. Chan First published in 2015 by Intelligentsia Gallery Dong Wang Hutong #11, Beijing intelligentsiagallery.com Thanks to: Michelle Garnaut; Geisel Cabrera; Hao Chen / 陈 昊; Ophelia S. Chan, Jacob Dreyer, Zhang Yanping / 张燕 平; Ronald Frankowski, Joao Dias Pereira, Christian Melz; Li Shan, Amanda Zhang / 小静; Kai Nan / 南开; Guido Tesio; Annie Wang; Natasha Qin / 覃美律; Xu Ruiyu / 徐瑞钰 All contents, images and texts of this publication remain property of their respective authors.

INTELLIGENTSIA MANIFESTO 智先 画廊 宣言 MANIFESTO ON NOTHINGNESS

by Garcia Frankowski THIS IS THE END by Jacob Dreyer EXPERIMENTING NOTHINGNESS Interview with Xie Molin DIE WAHRNEHMUNG VERRINGERT SICH MIT DER DISTANZ ZUR GEGENWART. by Aoto Oouchi SUPERFOLDING & FOLDING STORY

by Garcia Frankowski THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE

by Jacob Dreyer DRIVER PASSENGER

by Camille Ayme A TRUTH BURNING IN YOUR ART by Garcia Frankowski <蛋悠悠> by Chen Xi / 陈熹 SEMIOTIC ELEGY by Garcia Frankowski MUTE WORDS by Guido Tesio CRITICAL IMPORTANCE

by Felix Cruz Marcos AS FAR AS THE EYES CAN SEE

by Sophie Salamon TROYKA UNION NOTHING BUT A ROOM

by Felix Cruz Marcos A SINCERE START by Hao Chen 真诚的起点 陈昊 BLACK ON WHITE

by Guido Tesio

Artists: Alessandro Rolandi Anastasia Soboleva Aspartime Fengya Liu 刘风雅 Xiao Qu 瞿潇 Camille Ayme Céline Lamée Coco Esteve Doubleluckiness Triantafyllidis Nickolas & Triantafyllidis Theoklitos Elena Tsibizova Garcia Frankowski Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski Geoff Overheu Ilona Sagar James Ronner Jason Mena Johan Nijhoff Kang Haitao 康海涛 Laura Gil Santana Li Wei 李威 Marianna Ignataki Matjaž Tančič Meng Zhigang 蒙志刚 Nathalie Frankowski Ophelia S. Chan 陳秀煒 Pascal Meccariello Pavel Kiselev Ren Bo 任波 Ren Zhitian 任芷田 Roma Mokrov Simona Rota Sofia Borges Tom Kemp Troyka Union Olga Rodina, Anastasia Soboleva & Lena Tsibizova Vega Zaishi Wang 王在实 Vessna Perunovich Vinzenz Reinecke Wu Yang 吴洋 Xie Molin 谢墨凛 Zhang Zheyi 张哲溢 Zhou Fan

e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w

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w n o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e o o e

t o w o t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t n n t

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n t e t n n t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e t o w o t t o

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w n o n w w n o n e t w o n e t w o n e t w o n e o o e n e o o e

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t o w o t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t n n t

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n t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t o

o e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n o w t e n