SOLO Exhibition
Night & Gravity
Summer 2024
Shanghai, China
Night and Gravity, a solo exhibition by Zejun Shi, was presented in the summer of 2024 at the Main Building, No. 33, Lane 672, Changle Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai. The exhibition took place within a historic compound formerly associated with the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House.
The exhibition explores the relationship between night, the body, and gravity. Here, gravity refers not only to a physical force continuously acting upon the body, but also to a metaphor for emotion, memory, and perception. Through the relationship between the body, space, and visual experience, the works consider the invisible forms of weight that continue to shape individual experience.
The exhibition approaches night as a particular state of perception. As the routines of everyday life and external stimuli gradually recede, the body’s awareness of space, distance, and its own presence becomes heightened. Night and Gravityseeks the threshold between physical and psychological experience, examining how individuals perceive and carry these invisible forces, and how they come to understand their relationship with the world around them.
《Night and Gravity》施泽君个展 于2024年夏季在上海静安区长乐路672弄33号主楼展出，展览场地位于原上海 人民美术出版社相关历史建筑院落内。
展览围绕夜晚、身体与重力之间的关系展开。“重力”在这里不仅指向一种持续作用于身体的物理力量，也被转化为一种有关情绪、记忆与感知的隐喻。作品通过身体、空间与视觉经验之间的关系，讨论那些无法被直接看见，却始终作用于个体的重量。
展览将“夜晚”视为一种感知状态。当日常秩序与外部信息逐渐退去，身体对空间、距离与自身存在的感受被重新放大。《Night and Gravity》试图在这种状态中寻找身体与心理经验的交界，并呈现个体如何感知、承受，又如何重新理解自身所处的现实。
EXHIBITION DOCUMENTATION
INSTALLATION VIEW
PARADISE
Oil Painting 2021
180 × 120 cm
This work attempts to depict the psychological state of individuals with post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, during a flashback. For many people who have experienced a traumatic event, the trauma does not simply end with the passage of time, but continues to resurface through fragmented memories.
When triggered by a smell, sound, image, place, or emotion, they may be abruptly pulled back into the moment of the traumatic event, as though time had never moved forward. The carousel in the work is therefore not simply an amusement ride, but a psychological metaphor for the repetitive and cyclical nature of traumatic memory.
The individual seems trapped on a carousel that cannot stop, repeatedly passing through the same scenes, seeing the same images, and reliving the same fear. The body has returned to the present, while the mind remains caught in the past.
While the carousel continuously pulls the individual backward in time, the butterflies move in the opposite direction. With wings marked by the traces of burning, they symbolize the possibility of carrying the scars of trauma while continuing to move into a new sense of time.
