Born from the cut up trunk of a tree, Adonis is a deity of vegetation and rebirth in Greek mythology. The exhibition’s title comes from artist Siyi Li’s go to to the Rijksmuseum within the Netherlands, the place he encountered Hendrick Goltzius’s Dying Adonis (1609). Hanging excessive above eye degree, the portray captures Adonis mendacity on the grass, fatally wounded throughout a hunt. His blood, combined with Aphrodite’s tears, seeps into the soil and offers rise to a crimson anemone.
Li is drawn to those fleeting but poetically charged moments that all of the sudden shoot intense, sharp however ethereal imprints on the retina. Because the artist displays, nevertheless, “one can solely search for on the portray,” enveloped by its aura but powerless to protect it. Based mostly upon temporality, the exhibition unfolds right into a collection of sculptural works modelled after discarded firework batteries and an set up copied after a ready room. Like torn wrapping paper, spent fireworks, or laser-printed photographs, these specific supplies bear witness to moments as soon as deemed value remembering—earlier than the explosion, earlier than the unwrapping, earlier than the shutter. Layered actions, bodily gestures, and memory-driven interactions permeate each collection, culminating in a visible rhythm of preservation and transformation. SHOT—a cut up second through which notion is amplified to its threshold.
“After loss and ache, all we will do is domesticate one thing lovely. Maybe at some point, we could have a backyard.” Fragmented reminiscences and feelings take type, striving to nurture resilience from their fragility and transience. Within the hindsight of the exhibition, flowers slowly bloom and decay, disrupting the pristine house with its performative monument to impermanence. The cycle persists—but how can we foster resilience inside it?
at Antenna House, Shanghai
till Might 5, 2025
