In 2024 the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere celebrates the 20th anniversary of its institution with the opening of a new exhibition space – designed by the STARTT architecture studio – and two exhibitions, curated by artistic director Marcello Smarrelli: one of these is Anche il sole sorge, Wang Yuxiang‘s first solo exhibition in Italy.
The project ‘Anche il sole sorge’ by artist Wang Yuxiang is among the beneficiaries of ‘Per Chi Crea’ (Ed. 2023), a programme realised with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture and SIAE. Wang Yuxiang (1997, Anhui, China) focuses his research on the fusion of Mediterranean and Oriental cultures. Time, history, and memory are the leitmotifs that guide his work. The artist distances himself from the place where he works in order to analyse its particularities, restoring them through site-specific visual architectures. His training, which began in China and was implemented during his stays and travels, enables him to combine his research with a consideration of cultural diversity in the context of globalisation.
‘Anche il sole sorge’ is intended to produce a new body of work related to the theme of entropy as a metaphor for life, understood as a search for balance between the elements of nature. Entropy concerns the second law of thermodynamics and defines the degree of disorder of two related systems. Reflecting on the relationship between human beings and nature, Yuxiang has designed works to make the entropic relationship between humans and the environment visible and poetic through the conversion of thermal energy. The artist is interested in reading the human body as a ‘quantifiable’ element through a shift from a physical to a more sociological reflection. In fact, the study of entropy also concerns the world of information and production processes. The project is a visual investigation of the concept of entropy, describing the conversion of thermal energy caused by the age of steam and the information explosion of the current historical moment.
What is the acceptable extreme for human beings? With that open-ended question, the artist seeks to promote a reflection in his audience, who are called upon to experience entropy through the works as an awareness of the complex system of relationships that belong to existence — the relationship with the environment and the responsibility for climate change, the irreversibility of production processes and the chaos generated by the complexity of the information system.
The title of the project, which the artist translated in a subtly ironic key, is inspired by Ernest Miller Hemingway’s novel ‘The Sun also Rises’, published in New York in 1926. With such an allusion, Wang Yuxiang recalls the torpor generated by the events of the novel’s protagonist group, in which the love story is interwoven with a reflection on human beings’ relationship with nature and the search for truth.
The artist is carrying out research for the production of his works and is collaborating with Italian and international companies and workshops; for updates on the stages of his travels follow our IG and FB profiles!
‘Anche il sole sorge, will be the title of his solo exhibition curated by Marcello Smarrelli, with a text by Giuliana Benassi.
With support from the MiC and SIAE as part of the program Per Chi Crea (Ed. 2023)
