EARTHED：RECONNECTING WITH THE GROUND
Hall 7、8, 2F, Guangdong Museum of Art (BAIETAN)
2026-01-16——
2026-03-28
Date: 2026.1.16-2026.3.29
Venue: Hall 7、8, 2F, Guangdong Museum of Art (BAIETAN)
(Address: No. 19, Bai'etan S. Rd., Liwan District, Guangzhou）
Organizer: Guangdong Museum of Art
Artistic Director: Wang Shaoqiang
Curator: Yao Xiaofei
Exhibiting artists（A-Z）:
Bi Rongrong, Chen Xiaoyi,Tang Kwong san, Han Jianyu, Han Qian, Hang Chunhui, Li Yongzheng, Liu Guangli&Chen Zirui, Luo Dan, Michelle Blade, Qiu Anxiong, Taca, Wang Jun, Wang Muyuu, Wang Ningde,Xu Lei and others
On January 16, 2026, the exhibition "Return to the Earth: Landscapes and Ways of Dwelling in the Critical Zone" officially opened. The exhibition focuses on the shift in human cognitive experience regarding the earth within a highly mediatized and systematized contemporary society. Using the "Critical Zone" as an observational framework, it re-examines the core proposition of "how humans understand their position under today's technological conditions," presenting the public with an artistic feast that balances intellectual depth with visual tension.
Exhibition View 1
In the context of contemporary society, human understanding of the earth increasingly relies on translated and abstracted structures of knowledge and imagery. The earth's surface is no longer primarily perceived through bodily experience, but is instead transformed into data objects that can be managed, measured, and dispatched. The "Return to the Earth" proposed by this exhibition is not a naturalist gesture of regression, but rather a focus on the specific interface of the Earth's surface—a field where natural processes, human activities, and technological systems overlap and continuously generate the material conditions of reality. By introducing the concept of the "Critical Zone," the exhibition aims to transform the environment from a "represented object" into a starting point for reorganizing perception and thought, guiding the public to examine the relationship between humans and the environment beyond traditional cognitive frameworks.
Exhibition View
This exhibition presents the works of 18 artists, spanning media such as painting, photography, and video. Rather than pursuing uniformity in form or style, the exhibition focuses on how different practices respond to the relationship between matter, the body, and the environment through their respective paths. In video and photography, artists reveal the tension between technology, nature, and the subject by intervening in imaging mechanisms, viewing conditions, and extreme environments. Paintings and ink works reorganize the space between traditional image structures and contemporary experience, ensuring that landscapes, maps, and abstract forms no longer serve as mere patterns representing nature, but as results generated collectively by bodily experience, historical layers, and real-world circumstances. Some artists, through weaving, drawing, and long-term site-specific observation, bring overlooked microscopic changes, traces of life, and "slow time" back into the realm of the perceptible.
Exhibition View
Based on these markedly different yet internally resonant artistic practices, the exhibition presents a "surface landscape" composed of multiple scales, breaking the pattern of superficial, fleeting viewing and guiding the audience into a process of deep perception characterized by lingering, identification, and judgment. As a research-oriented exhibition, it does not intend to provide definitive answers regarding ecology or the future. Instead, it continuously poses questions through artistic practice: how humans and the environment can form a more lucid relationship in a world of constant change and uncertainty. The "way of dwelling" articulated by the exhibition is defined as a capacity for continuous adjustment—maintaining sensitivity to space, matter, and the "other" within complex conditions, while clearly recognizing that one is always within the environment, never outside of it.
Exhibition View
Through diverse artistic languages and the collision of ideas, this exhibition builds a platform for the public to re-understand the earth and examine the relationship between self and environment. During the exhibition, visitors can immerse themselves in the cognitive tension conveyed by the artworks and complete a deep reflection on the human-environment relationship through visual experience.
Exhibiting artists
Xu LeiBorn in 1963 in Jiangsu Province, China. Professor of Chinese National Academy of Arts, Vice President of China Hue Art Association. Xu first enrolled at the Nanjing University of the Arts in 1980 and majored in traditional Chinese painting. Since then, Xu's art practice has been dedicated to transforming traditional Chinese painting with modernist approaches, reviving its aesthetics in new visual iterations, using styles for compelling impact. He adopts installation and video as creative media to extend his painting concepts, advocating the translation of traditional Chinese cultural "principles" into contemporary visual perception and building connections to the future with a genealogy of art historical knowledge.
Cloud World
Ink and color on silk
153x530cm
2024-2025
Courtesy of the artist and Ying Center for Contemporary Art
Luo DanBorn in 1968 in Chongqing, China. Graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1992. Luo's works "No Man's Land" and "When to leave" have twice won the annual ranking of Chinese photography (2023, 2016). In 2011, he won the Hou Dengko documentary photography award; He also won the Golden Medal of Artist of the Year at the Lianzhou International Photography Annual Exhibition (2008) for his North, South series. Luo Dan's works have been collected by multiple art institutions and individuals, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, LUXELAKES·A4 Art Museum, The Chengdu Contemporary image Museum. Now, Luo Dan lives and works in Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
No man's land
Inkjet on archival paper
2021
Wang NingdeBorn in 1972 in Kuandian County, Liaoning Province, China. Wang graduated from the Department of Photography at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 1995 and currently lives and works in Beijing. For years, WANG's work has focused on reflecting on the systematic compositional mechanisms within the tradition of photography, questioning and expanding the generation and reception mechanisms of photographic works from multiple perspectives, including expressive language and material techniques.
The Deluge
Photographic paper, modulated printing inks applied by the artist
2022-2025
© Courtesy of the artist and Don Gallery
Hang ChunhuiBorn in 1976 in Dangtu, Anhui province,China. Hang received his M.A. from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2005 and his Ph.D. from the Chinese National Academy of Arts in 2011. His practice centers on ink as a primary medium, grounded in long-term engagement with traditional materials while exploring their potential transformation within contemporary contexts. Hang views the distinctive visual qualities of ink not merely as a technical choice but as one that carries an implicit cultural stance. Working within today's multi-media artistic environment, he introduces conceptual approaches and diverse visual experiences to continually expand the expressive boundaries and linguistic structures of ink, seeking an open and dynamic creative path between tradition and the present.
Gathers Mountains
Mixed Media
50x30cm
2025
Courtesy of the artist and Asia Art Center
Qiu AnxiongBorn in 1972 in Guangyuan, Sichuan Province, China. Qiu graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1994 and lived and worked in Chengdu from 1995 to 1998. He later graduated from the Kunsthochschule of the University of Kassel, Germany, in 2003. He currently lives and works in Shanghai, where he teaches at the School of Design, East China Normal University.
Lushan Eight Scenes · Misty Clouds over Qinhu Lake
Acrylic on canvas
240x600cm
2025
Li YongzhengBorn in Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China. Now living and working in Chengdu. Li's practice spans image-based media, painting, and installation, using personal memory and geopolitical context as the guiding threads to explore how individual experience shifts within the narratives of our times.
Icefield
Single-channel video
3’36”
2023
Wang JunBorn in 1974 in Chongqing, China. Wang graduated from the Department of Printmaking of Sichuan Fine Art Institute with BA (1999) and MA (2005). He currently lives and works in Chongqing and Guiyang Province.
Off the Beaten Track (portrait)
Acrylic on canvas
2023-2025
致谢艺术家与千高原艺术空间 Courtesy of the artist and A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
Wang MuyuuBorn in 1975 in Zibo, Shandong Province, China. Wang holds a PhD in Fine Arts. He currently teaches at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and holds the professional title of Second-Class Artist.
Becoming Peaks
Ink and color on paper
150×150cm
2024
TacaBorn in 1984 in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Taca earned his undergraduate degree from the Photography Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the United States.
Cave in Kuocang Mountain
Photography
200x145cm
2017
Han JianyuBorn in 1981 in Guangdong Province, China. Han hold a Master's degree from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA).
Deep in the Forest No.15
Charcoal stick on 180g Canson drawing paper
350x450cm
2023
Bi RongrongBorn in 1982 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China. Now working in Shanghai. Bi received her MA in Chinese Traditional Landscape Painting at Sichuan University in 2008.
Coiling Out of A Single Plan II--Painting 1--The Heart Has Wings
Acrylic, oil pastel, ink, charcoal on canvas
190 × 278 cm
2024
Courtesy of the artist and A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
Michelle Blade(USA)Born in 1981 in Los Angeles, USA. Michelle Blade received her BA from Loyola Marymount University in 2003 and her MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2008.
Echo Park Swans
Acrylic and Ink on Poplin
203x157.5cm
2024
Collection of Iris Art Museum
Chen XiaoyiBorn in Sichuan Province, China. Chen received her MA in Photography from the London College of Communication.
WHEN TETHYS SEA RETREATS WESTWARD, LEAVING THE REVERBERATION
4K Single channel video, Color
24’52”
2022
Courtesy of the artist and A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
Liu GuangliBorn in 1990 in Lengshuijiang, Hunan Province, China. Currently works and lives in Changsha and Paris.
Chen ZiruiBorn in 1997, Chen is a Chinese artist now in The Graduate School for Moving Image of Kunsthochschule Kassel.
How to Imagine the Unimaginable
Video Projection (Audio, Color, Double Channels)22’32”
2023
Han QianBorn in 1993 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Han received her BFA from Rome and her MFA from Paris.
Some Notes
Photography (Hand colouring and thread on Giclée Hahnemühle print)
2025
Tang Kwong San (HKG)Born in 1992 in Dongguan, China. Tang received his BFA in 2019 and currently lives and works in Hong Kong.
Diaspora III
Single-Channel Video with Sound
10'41''
2022
© Courtesy of the artist and Galerie du Monde
Opening hours: every Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 17: 00 (admission is closed at 16: 30 and clearance is started at 16:45).
Closed on Mondays (except legal holidays and special circumstances).
Baietan Area: No. 19, Baietan South Road, Liwan District,Guangzhou P.C. 510170 | Front Desk Phone：020-88902999，020-88902888
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Closed on Mondays (except legal holidays and special circumstances).
Baietan Area: No. 19, Baietan South Road, Liwan District,Guangzhou P.C. 510170 | Front Desk Phone：020-88902999，020-88902888
Ersha Island: No. 38 Yanyu Road, Ersha Island, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou P.C. 510105 | Front Desk Phone：020-87351468
