Absolute

Galerie Ora-Ora is pleased to present our first Ora-Ora Masters show: Absolute – Xu Hongfei Solo Exhibition. The opening reception will be held from 6 pm to 8 pm on August 27 (Tuesday), and the show will be on view until September 13.

Absolute reflects how Xu Hongfei uses the sculptural body to comment on social and aesthetic concerns. The exhibition uses art philosophy to present new ways of understanding his Chubby Women sculptures. This interdisciplinary approach emphasises how Xu’s artworks are elaborately clothed in inference and meaning, making them culturally significant. They elicit a discussion regarding the aesthetics of the female form. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is regarded as the source of modern aesthetics. Hegel argued that “aesthetics is the spiritual manifestation of ideas”. This is the essence behind his “absolute idealism”, which provides a basis for understanding modern art.

Born in 1963, renowned Chinese artist Xu Hongfei has also been influenced by Hegel’s “absolute idealism”. The Chubby Women sculptures mirror this principle because they reflect Xu’s ideas in an aesthetic form. These sculptures do not depict a real overweight woman, but they are actually works of art produced through spiritualisation. Even though many of the works in this exhibition are nude, they do not have an uncomfortable tone. This is because they represent an ideology, concept, judgement and intellectual thought. This walks more or less deliberately in line with the Neo-Kantian view, which suggests how “the aesthetic world can be constituted only by separating form and desire”.