向京 Xiang Jing ( b.1968 )

Photo: Courtesy of Artist Studio

1968年生于北京,1995年毕业于中央美术学院雕塑系。现工作、生活于北京。

与其说向京是个“女性主义”艺术家,不如说她是个带有女性视角和女性意识的艺术家,但这都不是重点,她作品里透露出的不安感,是对于现代性下人性的迷雾和对于生存本身的不断确认——“内在性”是她所企图挖掘的生存真相。

问题先行是向京的工作方法,但她在业已被边缘化的写实雕塑语言里,在个人化塑造、雕塑着色、玻璃钢材料的使用这些语言建构上,都做出非常独特而影响深远的当代性实验,开创出一种“外在看来是具象的现实主义,实则深度探讨人性内在的精神价值”的作品面貌,在当代艺术景观里构成一种独树一帜的风格。在谈及“当代性与传统媒介”、“女性身份与普遍人性”、“观看与被看”、“内在欲望”、“具象艺术的抽象化”等学术命题时,向京及其创作是个不可回避的个案。


Born in Beijing in 1968 and graduated from the faculty of sculpture, Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Xiang now works and lives in Beijing.

Xiang’s artwork reveals a sense of insecurity through which the misty nature of the modern human character and life itself are accentuated and reified. Xiang Jing seeks after the existential truth of life through her continued investigation of “internality” of human nature in her work. Rather than viewing Xiang Jing as a “feminist” artist, she is perhaps more accurately described as an artist with a woman’s viewpoint and perspective. 

Xiang Jing’s work practice is problem-oriented. Within the gradually marginalized realist sculpting language framework, Xiang Jing has made idiosyncratic and influential contemporary experiments. She shapes each of her sculptures into individual appearance and characters, hand-paints her sculptures in many layers, and chooses fiberglass as her principle material. These innovative efforts engender an impression of her work that is “representational and realist on the exterior, but highly contemplative and inquisitive in the complexity of humanity and the value of spiritual life in our contemporary age”. Xiang Jing and her work appear often in discourse on “contemporaneity vs. traditional medium”, “the female identity and the universal human nature”, “to observe and to be observed”, “internal desire”, “figurative art towards abstraction”, etc.

刘焕章、向京:人体

Liu Huanzhang, Xiang Jing: Body

2024.5.21—2024.7.21
星空间 Star Gallery 北京

春困

Spring Sprang Sprung

2024.3.2—2024.4.7
拾萬空间 Hunsand Space 北京