MadeIn Gallery will present YOYO’s solo exhibition “The First Emperor of Qin Is Not a Mountain” (chapter 3/3) on March 19, 2022. This is YOYO’s first solo exhibition at MadeIn Gallery, featuring a series of mixed media paintings on canvas, works on paper, and sculptures created between 2017 and 2021. The works are based on the artist’s experience of winter sketching in the Qin Mountains and grasp of the delicate harmony between nature and humanity. This solo exhibition illustrates his recognition of the human spirituality and observation of the relationship between self and society, history and nature, and even between people.

Curator SUN Qidong attributes YOYO’s art-making to a “Gaia” style of creative practice, which “seeks to realize his communication, negotiation, and dialogue with nature so as to gain force in a dynamic situation”. Despite its emphasis on interconnection, the hierarchical, dichotomous, or centralist mindset under an outdated global order is still insufficient to grasp the dynamic force of life. YOYO’s practice “allows the Qin Mountains to re-emerge from a concrete, closed locality as the ‘Gaia’ in motion, thus providing us with an opportunity to rethink and re-articulate the ‘clash of civilizations’ under the new, networked global order”. The Qin Mountains, as Gaia, are no longer associated with the traditional connotations of harmony, nurture, and nourishment, but are rife with undercurrents of contradiction and conflict. The Qin Mountains are the personification of the force of life.

“The First Emperor of Qin Is Not a Mountain” is a trilogy in reverse, with this exhibition being the inaugural chapter. By alternating between micro and macro perspectives, YOYO intends for the drama of the Qin Mountains to unfold in three acts. Each exhibition, as a chapter, consists of different mixed media paintings and sculptures, which the artist has composed into an uninterrupted chain of events: the third chapter begins with his life experience in the Qin Mountains, the second chapter explores the vicissitudes of the Qin Mountains from a micro perspective, and the first, or final, chapter will present a phenomenology of the Qin Mountains.