KeYi Gallery is pleased to announce that Guo Zhaolin's solo exhibition "Another Person" will open on October 11th at the Hefei Space, marking the artist's first solo exhibition collaboration with the gallery. The exhibition will present more than ten new works created by him in the past year, focusing on his latest achievements in fragmented images and self identity exploration. The extension will continue until November 26th.
The exhibition is titled Another Man, echoing Borges' short story of the same name. In Borges'"El Otro", the young Borges encounters his older self in a dream. Although the two strive to confirm each other's identities, there remains a subtle sense of distance and estrangement. During their dialogue, the elder Borges even questions whether a single, unchanging "self" truly exists. Within the interweaving of limited time and shifting consciousness, they discuss identity, experience, and memory, yet remain unable to fully resolve the fundamental question: "Who am I?" This exploration of the entanglement between time and self lies at the heart of the exhibition's inquiry into individual "Identity ".
Identity is the core concept of self-continuity along the axis of time, and also an unavoidable self-reflection in the context of historical change. It encompasses both the preservation of consistent core traits and the questioning of one’s sense of stability when confronted with diverse experiences and external influences. From the temporal dimension, identity refers to the individual’s continuity across past, present, and future. From the social dimension, it involves balancing memory, values, and social expectations: individuals sustain their inner continuity through recollection and belief, while simultaneously shaping their identity imprint within the gaze of others and the norms of society. In contemporary life, the coexistence of multiple roles, the fragmentation of information, and the rapid shifts of environment constantly challenge this stability, compelling us to seek self-identification through an ongoing process of deconstruction and reconstruction.
In Guo Zhaolin's creations, it is precisely through the construction of fragmented images that he responds to the core question of "Identity" : when we separate the various fragments of memory, experience and identity, how do these tiny elements maintain a coherent "me" after recombination? The images in the work are cut into irregular small shapes. These fragments are symbols of life, past moments, or abstract textures. Each fragment is both an independent "carrier of experience" and contributes a unified image within the collective. The completed silhouette may seem like a whole, but it is actually composed of countless minute details, suggesting the generation process of an individual's identity under the interweaving of multiple memories and perceptions.
"Another Man" takes this as its point of departure, presenting and questioning "Identity" as a process of constant flux, fragmentation, and reconstruction. It reflects on those seemingly ordinary yet indispensable traces of the self, sensing the interweaving of past and new experiences, and experiencing the subtle tension of identity as it fractures and reassembles. As Borges once wrote: "What is the self? The self is the past, the present, and the expectation of time to come, of the future."
