In Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, the indigenous Jnato and Hnahnu communities live by "butterfly time," marking time through the presence of different butterflies. For them, time is a cyclical network of reciprocal gifts, shaped by rituals, migrations, and seasons. This exhibition explores multi-species temporality through seven artists: Lv Yan’s contemplative voids, Ma Zhaolin’s expressive contrasts, Yang Li’s organic flow, Lim Ka Ye’s intense inkwork, Chen Dayuan’s vast intimacy, Yin Yan’s fleeting symbols, and Huang Yunchang’s sculpted lines. Rejecting linear time, they embrace a spiraling cycle of existence, challenging conventional perceptions of time and humanity.
However, this exhibition is not a romanticized retelling of Indigenous ecological perspectives; rather, it serves as an experimental reflection on and reconciliation with the ‘tyranny of time’. As monarch butterflies migrate across North America each year, their wings stir up two profound questions: ‘Who has the right to define time?’ and ‘What kind of time should humans live in?’ An ancient adage reminds us: time has never belonged to us, but we have always belonged to a greater temporal network.
These artists, each using different species and spatial dimensions as their medium, create their own temporal narratives, exploring the possibilities of resisting the ‘tyranny of time’. Lv Yan’s work embodies the temporality of horses, blending Western realism with Eastern expressiveness. He maintains the rigorous attention to color and form found in oil painting while incorporating the blank space philosophy of Chinese ink painting. By blurring the background, he enhances the tension of the main imagery, infusing the composition with a Zen-like quality—where ‘the unpainted space becomes the most profound realm’. His paintings are neither mere imitations of objects nor simple reproductions of tradition. Instead, through metaphorical depictions of animals, he explores deep dialogues between the individual and the era, nature and civilization. By alienating animals in his paintings, he transforms human emotions into perceptible visual language, creating a unique form of self-portraiture. In contrast to Lv Yan’s solemn portraits, Ma Zhaolin’s works depict the struggle between zebras and cheetahs. Ma retains the expressive nature of ink painting while integrating modern compositional awareness. Geometric forms lend abstract tension to her work, and the stark contrast between frozen death imagery and empty backgrounds highlights the eternal theme of ‘survival and destruction’. This aestheticized conflict of violence subtly critiques the alienation of modern civilization.
Yang Li’s paintings feature doves and small monsters—her ‘old friends’. She does not seek to metaphorize the doves; in our conversations, she expressed her admiration for them and her desire to live in dove-time. She faces pain and fear like a dove and embraces spring with hope like a dove. Her paintings flow with fearless simplicity. Lim Ka Ye’s ink paintings, by contrast, feel sharp. A slaughtered pig hangs on a spinning wheel—a representation of both the pig’s time and humanity’s game. Her multicultural background is reflected in her work as she explores how Chinese ink painting’s unique language and techniques can be used to reveal deeper meanings beyond mere imagery. The fusion of steel and flesh, the armored warhorse—these elements, like her use of fluid materials, are both contradictory and compelling. She employs animal imagery as clues to guide collective memory, re-examining materiality within the contemporary context.
Chen Dayuan’s ‘Desert of the Real’ abandons symbolic language, narrative, and meaning. His paintings explore the raw materiality of mountains and rivers before language arrives. Bold brushstrokes and unrefined colors describe a wilderness untouched by modern conditioning. In his constructed narratives, ‘moments’ are exposed in their most primal form, allowing viewers to forget the passage of time and return to their true selves. His desert is untamed, challenging, and mesmerizing. Yin Yan focuses on cats, capturing their rough and grotesque nature. His work depicts fleeting moments, making even the most familiar cat characteristics feel strange and surprising. He seeks to preserve this sense of unfamiliarity, knowing that, over time, the moment normalizes and becomes irretrievable. His work illustrates an infinite cycle of approaching yet never fully grasping an elusive subject. Huang Yunchang’s sculptures use bronze to shape horses and sacred beasts, emphasizing ‘imagistic expression’. His work inherits traditional sculptural forms while incorporating contemporary abstraction and formal aesthetics. He skillfully translates the beauty of Chinese ink painting’s lines into the fluidity of three-dimensional sculpture, simulating the brushstrokes of ink painting with smooth bronze contours. Through meticulous casting techniques, he imbues his sculptures with an ancient solidity while using abstraction and line work to highlight the material’s modernity.
