Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In the latest exhibition at Hong Kong\u2019s Blindspot Gallery by Beijing-based artist Chen Wei, a series of LED sculptures initially look like high-tech speakers, flickering in blue and purple. But that picture does not fit with their steel poles, which protrude like scaffolding. As the eyes adjust to the gloom, another idea takes hold. They are miniature skyscrapers \u2014 and something about them is broken.On the walls are staged photographs, typical of Chen\u2019s work. In one, a glass door is locked with a glowing ring. In another, a man sits hunched inside an illuminated makeshift tent, a self-confinement chamber. \u201cOne part of it is to do with Covid,\u201d says Chen of the exhibition\u2019s title Breath of Silence, adding a wheeze for effect. But it is also to do with \u201ca space for discussion\u201d, of the changes that the pandemic did not usher in but merely consolidated. \u201cI feel like we are now in an era of isolation,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone is like an island.\u201dPeople seem to have lost themselves. The light is shining, and they don\u2019t know where it is Best known for his neon-lit photographs of nightclub ennui in the mid-2010s, Chen is part of a wider artistic sensibility in China: one that tackles urbanisation and its discontents. Like the skyscrapers themselves, the approach speaks to feelings of vast ambition \u2014 and vast limitation.Born in Zhejiang province in 1980, Chen recalls a childhood where there was for a while no electricity. It was a time of scarcity; his father first bought him a camera when he was 10. After studying videography at Zhejiang University, he began to exhibit photography in the 2000s, initially in a way that involved \u201cno plan\u201d. This soon became an issue, because for Chen, there is \u201cno limit to what you want to express\u201d.In a search for focus, Chen\u2019s lens homed in on the city, which \u201chas many layers, like a picture has many layers\u201d. Noon Club, a series of atmospheric, staged photographs of isolated nightclubbers stripped of all their frenzy and connection, brought international attention. \u201cPeople seem to have lost themselves,\u201d he says. \u201cThe light is shining, and they don\u2019t know where it is.\u201d As well as nightlife itself, the work also explored \u201cthe state of people\u201d in the 2010s, when the early optimism of China\u2019s economic growth miracle was already beginning to fade. But it also coincided with his own life: his move to Beijing in 2008, the shift into his thirties, the pressure to buy a house.Well into another decade, Chen is turning inwards. Breath of Silence includes a triptych of images depicting screens. One shows a man, his face obscured by the glow of a phone. Another shows a woman lying on a sofa, facing away from the camera, the glare from the unseen phone implying that she is not, in fact, asleep. A third shows a darkened room and the blinding light of an open laptop, set on a table with a cloth on it, as if it were an altar. \u201cCovid made everyone alone,\u201d says Chen, \u201cbut even without Covid it was already like that\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009We are forced to enter a screen, we work every day, we work incessantly to display ourselves.\u201dFor his next project, he plans to delve further into the \u201cnew reality\u201d of screens. \u201cIn China and America it is most obvious,\u201d he says. \u201cWe slowly hide in our screens, we take everything and put it in screens.\u201dEconomic decline, urban isolation, a schism between the real and the virtual: any observer would be forgiven for thinking of the artist as a pessimist. But in person \u2014 speaking in a regionless Mandarin peppered with English phrases \u2014 Chen frequently breaks into laughter on all variety of topics (at one point he does so while recalling a Mao-era slogan: \u201cCatch up with Britain and overtake America\u201d). Recent works in the Hong Kong show, including a photograph of lemons scattered under dappled light, suggest gentler, even more humorous, textures. Another work \u2014 a piece of cloth lit by a projector on both sides \u2014 resembles rain running down a window. (I almost missed this but was alerted to it when two visitors from the mainland were photographing it. \u201cChina is developing too fast,\u201d one said.)Art, according to Chen, is a way of establishing a \u201ccollective memory\u201d. \u201cIn this memory,\u201d he says, \u201cwe do not immediately want to make a judgment.\u201d People are \u201ctoo quick to make judgments\u201d, but a \u201cnew world should have new understandings\u201d.What is being collectively remembered? In recent decades, Chinese cities have grown at breakneck speed \u2014 Chen chuckles at the thought, as though laughter is the only appropriate response. When he was a child, he rarely went to big cities: they were simply something he imagined (it was easy to imagine things back then). \u201cThese days,\u201d he says, \u201cwe tend to say globalisation has finished.\u201dIn 2019, just before the pandemic began, he had a conversation with an Italian architect at an open studio event in Zurich. He told him about his childhood in the countryside, the lack of electricity, the \u201csingular image of my mother holding a candle\u201d. The architect had a very \u201cintense feeling\u201d, Chen recalls. \u201cHe said it was as though, in such a brief 30 or 40 years, I had lived through both his father and his grandfather\u2019s generations.\u201d\u201cThere is no major cultural discussion,\u201d he says, \u201cas to how we bore this change\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. This is what my art is trying to express.\u201dTo April 12, blindspotgallery.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In the latest exhibition at Hong Kong\u2019s Blindspot Gallery by Beijing-based artist Chen Wei, a series of LED sculptures initially look like high-tech speakers, flickering in blue and purple. But that picture does not fit with their steel poles, which protrude like scaffolding. As<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-248412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248414,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248412\/revisions\/248414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}