Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the group exhibition “A Thousand Waystations”, which will be held from April 26th to June 18th, 2025, at its Beijing 2nd Space. Curated by Fiona Lu, the exhibition brings together works by Li Binyuan, Li Qing, Liu Yujia, Shang Yang, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Wang Du, Xue Feng, Yue Minjun, Zhang Jian and Zheng Guogu.
The "Waystation," interpreted as an arrival forever in process, serves simultaneously as the capillary system of ancient empires and a temporary anchor point in our era of flux; it is both a relic of history and a seed for the future. In a time when GPS carves the world into centimeter-scale grids, humanity paradoxically finds itself adrift in unprecedented disorientation. The "borderless" myth woven by capital and algorithms seeks to flatten all geographical folds. Here, the "Waystation" is reimagined as a strategy of resistance, transmuting into a non-hierarchical geographical poetics. Spanning from Deleuze's rhizome network to the neural impulses of the digital age, from salt stains on the desolate wilderness to data dust in the cloud, the works of ten artists in this exhibition are like layers of temporary coordinates scattered across the earth, marking the migration trajectories of body, data, nature, culture, and spirit. Beneath the smoothed surface of a certain globalization, they carve out untamed folds. This is neither a point of origin nor a final destination, but a critical threshold where countless possibilities erupt, signaling the nomadic destiny ingrained in human genes.
EXHIBITING WORKS
 Shang Yang Remaining Water No.2 Mixed media, steel frames, video Variable Dimensions 2019 |  Sun Yuan&Peng Yu Dear Installation 400 × 400 × 180 cm 2019 |  Liu Yujia The Pale View of Hills Single channel 4K film color, stereo sound 38'26''；5+1AP2018 |
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 Li Binyuan Performance on the Windowsill Photograph of performanceand video installation 60 x 48 cm x 44 sheets; 7'25''; 6+2AP 2022-2023 |  Li Qing In the Clouds Antique wooden window, oil paint, plexiglass 157 x 93 x 9.5 cm 2022 |  Yue Minjun Sunset Glow Oil on canvas 120 x 90 cm 2022 |
 Yue Minjun Brilliance Acrylic on canvas 130 x 110 cm 2024 |  Yue Minjun Isolated Island Oil on canvas 300 × 300 cm 2010 |  Xue Feng Quiet quiescent tranquility 2016-8 Oil on canvas 160 x 720 cm (160 x 240 cm x 3) 2016 |
 Xue Feng Who Scattered Pearls and Threads Across the Land Desktop installation 244 x 122 cm 2024-2025 |  Xue Feng Who Copied and Pasted Cities One After Another Desktop installation 244 x 122 cm 2024-2025 |  Zheng Guogu Visionary Transformation of Awakening Consciousness Oil on canvas 105 x 72 cm 2024 |
 Zheng Guogu Visionary Transformation of Li Fire Oil on canvas 126 x 80 cm 2024 |  Zheng Guogu Visionary Transformation of Akashic records Oil on canvas 126 x 81 cm 2025 |  Zhang Jian Jump Oil on canvas 200 x 150 cm 2025 |
 Zhang Jian The green plants in the café Oil on canvas 162 x 130 cm 2025 |  Zhang Jian Mount Kumgang No.3 Oil on canvas 172 x 122 cm 2022 |  Wang Du WANG DU Yellow Page 70k Offset paper, Four-color offsetprinting, aluminum alloy book shelf 70g 147 × 33 × 24 cm, (1000P/book, 30books/set︱1000P） 2008 |
Artist
Li Binyuan
b.1985,Yongzhou, Hunan Province, China,and graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2011.
Now lives and works in Berlin and Yongzhou. Li explores physicality, substance, surrounding environment, conceptual cognition, and social values through physical actions, video works, and performances which are the port of entry to the social fabric of everyday society. His experiments occupy urban and rural spaces, from public scenery of the streets to natural sites, or remote post-industrial locations. Using his body as a sculptural material to enact creative investigation. He uses ruptures and repetition to manifest how sculpture and performance are intertwined. His artistic practice is motivated by the needs to know one's spatial and material environment through bodily interaction in order to question and transcend the norms and ideologies our environments impose.
His work has exhibited throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art and other art institutions. His recent major solo exhibitions include Flowing Fire (Contemporary Gallery Kunming, Kunming, China, 2024), Cinema Paradiso (Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2020), The Last Letter (Observation Society, Guangzhou, China, 2020), Li Binyuan (HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2019), Absorb (MU Artspace, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2019), Land: Zhang Huan and Li Binyuan (MoMA PS1, New York, USA, 2018), and Social Behaviours (CFCCA, Manchester, UK, 2015). Meanwhile, Li is the winner of The Merit Award by Inward Gazes - Documentaries of Chinese Performance Art (2015), The Golden Key Award nomination at the 37th Kassel Documentary Festival (2020), The Chinese Youth Artist Award of the 14th AAC Art (2020), The Grand Prize Winner of the 17th Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2021).
Li Qing
b.1981, Huzhou, Zhejiang Province
He lives and works in Hangzhou and Shanghai. Li Qing’s paintings, installations and video works seek rational rifts in similarity and contradiction, acting on the perception and acknowledgment of a viewer through circuitous and overlapped structures. His persistent painting practice no longer focuses on working within the four corners of the picture, but instead constantly expands painting’s external space and ways of seeing. The uninterrupted experimentation and sustained momentum across these various series are outgrowths of the themes Li Qing has been following since 2005: information and image in the technological age, the social mechanisms and power dynamics of seeing, the relationship between people, architecture and the city amidst globalization, the patterns and disciplining of aesthetics in the consumer age, constructing conflict structures and new forms of expression. The capture of micro-politics in everyday spaces and images, the analysis of ideology in aesthetic tradition, reflect his historical consciousness among the younger generation of Chinese artists.
Li Qing is currently the chief tutor of the Multi-dimensional Expressionism Studio of the Oil Painting Department of China Academy of Art. He has had solo shows at Fondazione Prada’s Rongzhai, Shanghai, China; Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China; Tomás y Valiente Art Centre (CEART), Madrid, Spain; Arario Museum, Seoul, Korea; The Orient Foundation, Macao, China; Goethe Institute, Shanghai, China; Almine Rech; Galerie Eigen+Art; Tang Contemporary Art; among others.
A number of prestigious art institutes and galleries have also included his works for group shows, such as Shanghai Biennale; Prague Biennale; Guangzhou Triennial; Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\ Architecture (UABB); Venice Biennale Special Invitation Exhibition; Gwangju Biennale Special Exhibition; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, USA; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC USP), São Paulo, Brasil; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; David Zwirner, Hong Kong, China; Ota Fine Arts, Singapore; etc. His works are collected by many art institutes and foundations, such as Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Institut Valencia d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain; Rubell Museum, Miami, USA; Deutsche Bank, Germany; Kistefos Museum, Oslo, Norway; Arario Museum, Seoul/Jeju, Korea; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, China; Bredin Prat Foundation, Paris, France; Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, China; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China; CC Foundation, Shanghai, China; etc. Li is shortlisted for the Jean-François Prat Prize in 2017. In 2023, he was selected for Influential: Forbes China Contemporary Young Artists.
Liu Yujia
Liu Yujia graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and obtained her master's degree from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She currently lives and works in Beijing. Liu’s short films weave documentary footage, literature, ethnography, folklore, and travelogue into embodied and affective experiences. Taking the physical landscape of Asia for her subject matter and setting, her lyrical style unsettles the line between straight documentary and narrative storytelling. Meditative and symbolic, Liu’s work often relegates humans to the status of minor characters by focusing on other forms of life.
Recent solo exhibitions include MadeIn Art Museum, Shanghai (2023); Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing (2023/2017/2016); DRC No.12, Beijing (2021) ; Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai (2015). Group exhibitions include the “Cosmos Cinema”-14th Shanghai Biennale in 2023; “Why Not Ask Again” -11th Shanghai Biennale in 2016; “Being Theoria”- 4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art in 2022, Hangzhou; University Art Gallery-University of Pittsburgh, USA; Moss Art Center, Virginia, USA; Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan, Korea; Sprueth Magers, Berlin, Germany ; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany; Museum Sinclair-Haus, Bad Homburg,Germany. Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland; White Rabbit Museum, Sydney, Australia; CFCCA, Manchester, UK; Troy House Art Fundation, London, UK；Kadist Foundation, San Francisco, USA; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; Power Station of Art Museum, Shanghai; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; He Art Museum, Shunde, Guangdong; Times Museum, Guangzhou ; UCCA Dune Art Museum, Beidaihe; OCAT Shanghai; OCAT Shenzhen, OCAT Beijing; Lianzhou Photo Museum, Lianzhou; Moca Yinchuan, Ningxia; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Lushun Museum，Dalian；China Port Museum, etc.
Her video works and films have been screened in Centre Pompidou, Paris and Hongkong M Plus Museum; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; and other museums and institutes around the world. She has been nominated for the 2018-2019 Porsche "Young Chinese Artist of the Year" Award and "2022 OCAT × KADIST Emerging Media Artist Program". Her video works are widely collected by institutions and private collectors such as the Centre Pompidou in France, the Kadist Art Foundation, and the White Rabbit Gallery in Australia, etc.
Shang Yang
b.1941,Hubei
Shang yang was graduated from Hubei Art College in 1965 and graduated with a master’s degree in oil painting in 1981. He is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital Normal University.
Shang Yang’s artistic works are shaping the body of the nature by transplanting, juxtaposing, splicing and composing the segments of the nature rather than describing natural landscape. In the process of the artistic creation, he is not only joining the ancient pictures with contemporary optical images, but also linking traditional technique to contemporary anti-technique. It is just by such a mixed expression that Shang Yang creates a visual prospect overstepped from visible objects.
Sun Yuan&Peng Yu
Sun Yuan was born in Beijing in 1972, Peng Yu was born in Heilongjiang in 1974 and subsequently moved to Beijing, where both of them currently live and work. These two prominent figures made their way together through the winding cultural situation of the 90’s in China, expressing their singularity without following the spectacular artistic mainstream of that period, being extremely provocative, challenging the moral standards that prevailed in the global art stream. The interest in unusual materials, the absorption of ancient conflicts and an extraordinary ability of intuition and foresight is what make their artworks intense and unique.
Wang Du
b.1956, Wuha,China, has been working and living in Paris, France since 1990.
He has taught at the Paris VIII University Art Department and the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Brest, France.
Wang Du's artistic presentation includes installations, sculptures, photography, multimedia, and more. His assertion of "I am the media, I am reality, I am the image" can be seen as an interpretation of his conceptual works. He believes that the "comprehensive media 'third reality' is forming a contemporary social and cultural ecology that needs to be continually redefined." Therefore, his works are a series of concepts that redefine reality from different perspectives, and also his claimed "expression" as "the spokesperson for the public and reality."
Xue Feng
born in Ninghai,Zhejiang Province and graduated from the China Academy of Art.
He currently lives and works in Shenzhen. In recent years, he has positioned naturalism at the center of his world, frequently traversing the land by car, gradually accumulating observations of geography, terrain, locality, and culture. Combining his understanding of human labor, materiality, spirituality, and belief, he constructs the artist’s worldscape, forming a new artistic narrative.
Solo Exhibitions & Projects Include: "The Road to Syracuse" (MangroveGallery, Shenzhen, 2024) , "Archives of Nature" (Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2023) , Project: "Beads Strung into a Necklace" (Shekou Gallery, Shenzhen, 2023) , DNA Art & Design Fair - "Xue Feng Solo Project" (Tang Contemporary Art, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning) , "Seurat Studies: Display and Printer" (Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, 2021) , "Faraway" (Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen, 2021) , Project: "Mountains, Plains, and the Sea" (SENS Gallery, Shanghai, 2020) , "Pictogram" (Boers-Li Gallery, New York, 2019), "Geographical Narratives" (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2018), "Boundless" (Exit Gallery, Hong Kong, 2017), "Silence" (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2016), "Encircling" (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2013), "Extended Landscape" (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2011).
Selected Group Exhibitions Include: "Friendship Business" (Guangzhou Gallery, 2025), "Half Space, Half Void" (Shanglin Art Museum, Ningbo University, 2024), "Art in Qiaoshan" - Guangdong Nanhai Earth Art Festival 2024 (Yugeng Yueyun, Foshan Nanhai District), "Spring Scenes of Wutong" - 9th Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale (Nantou Ancient City, 2023), "Transformation" - 7th Guangzhou Triennial (Guangdong Art Museum, 2023), "Da Wan Unplugged" - 9th Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale (Da Wan Shi Ju, 2022), "Artists' Glory" - Century of Zhejiang Oil Painting Exhibition (Zhejiang Art Museum, 2022), "Curatorial Lesson 2" (Hua Art Museum, Shenzhen, 2020), "River Without Buoys" (Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2019), "Within Sight: New Chinese Painting" (Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, 2018), "Mapping Painting" (National Agricultural Exhibition Hall, Beijing, 2018), "Chinese Whispers" (Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, 2016), "Beyond Utopia" (Castello Di Rivara Contemporary Art Museum, Turin, Italy, 2016), "Illusion" (Night Gallery, Los Angeles, 2016), "Dakar Biennale" (National Theatre of Senegal, Dakar, 2016), "Broken Atlas" (Sishang Art Museum, Beijing, 2015), "Open Books: Artists and Their Chinese Albums" (Chinese University of Hong Kong Museum, 2015), "Neither Different Nor the Same: Experimental Exhibition of Young Chinese Artists" (CAFA Art Museum, Hangzhou, 2015), "Traces of Leaking Roof" (Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, 2012).
Yue Minjun
b.1962, Heilongjiang, China, currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Yue Minjun is one of the leading figures of Chinese contemporary art and an internationally renowned artist.
Having graduated from Hebei Normal University in 1983 with a major in oil painting, he currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Yue Minjun has been creating this exaggerated “Self-image” since the beginning of the 1990s. In recent years, this image has expanded further into the field of sculpture and printmaking. Sometimes the “laughing man” appears independently, or collectively in depictions of daily life. Through the “laughing man”, who squints his eyes, laughing and grinning exaggeratedly with dramatic gestures, Yue interrogates social phenomena in an ironic and cynical manner.
Since participating in the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, Yue has been invited every year as one of the recurring contemporary Chinese artists at the Venice Biennale, which demonstrates his profound artistic contribution, and his distinctive artistic characteristics have established the non-negligible importance of contemporary Chinese art on the world stage.
He became the cover story of Time magazine in 2007, and was nominated as one of the “Person of the Year 2007 - People Who Mattered.” On the list which included prominent figures such as Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton, amongst others, Yue was the only artist and only Chinese national to be nominated. As Time described Yue Minjun: “If you think China has a close relationship with the current and future status of the world, then this is the man to paint China.”
Yue Minjun’s artworks have been widely collected by various domestic and foreign art institutions, galleries, and museums. This includes the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Culture Centre of Francois Mitterrand, the Busan Museum of Art, the Guangdong Museum of Art, the Shenzhen Art Museum, amongst other important institutions.
Zhang Jian
b.1968, Beijing
Zhang Jian currently lives and works in both Beijing, China and Osaka, Japan.
Zhang Jian’s artistic practice centers around landscapes, exploring the intricate and nuanced relationship between humanity and nature. His works embody a poetic sensibility where beauty and melancholy coexist. Through delicate brushwork and layered color fields, Zhang constructs quiet, introspective visual atmospheres that go beyond depicting natural scenes, offering instead emotional reflections on states of being. His images often hover between reality and fiction, presenting landscapes that feel simultaneously distant and intimate. This reimagining of landscape is not only a formal inquiry but also a projection of psychological experience, inviting viewers into a space of contemplation and resonance.
In recent years, Zhang has presented a number of significant solo exhibitions, including From Houhai to Jinshan Mountain (2025, Chun Art Museum, Shanghai); Over the Garden Wall (2024, La Galerie Paris Horizon, Shenzhen); Zhang Jian: Seeking Light (2022, Yulan Tang, Beijing); Zhang Jian: Seeking (2020, Exit Gallery, Hong Kong); Park-Zhang Jian Solo Exhibition (2019, FEEFAN’S ART, Beijing); and There Is Always a Tranquil Landscape (2017, PIFO New Art Gallery, Beijing). His works are included in major public collections including Museum Folkwang (Germany), Shanghai Art Museum (China), Guangdong Museum of Art (China), Long Museum (China), and Zhangjiang Contemporary Art Museum (China).
Zheng Guogu
b.1970, Yangjiang,Guangdong province,where he currently lives and works, graduated from the printmaking department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1992.
Zheng Guogu’s artistic practices utilize a wide range of media in order to express the extensive diversity of the ideas he develops in connection with the processes of life. In 2000, Zheng Guogu initiated The Age Of Empire ( from 2012 onward, he changed the name from The Age of Empire to Liao Garden) , a constantly evolving utopian domain that provides a setting for his experimentations rooted in Chinese philosophy. The project integrates complicated spatial modalities and social relations, which comprise the entire process of dwelling in a physical space, from the conceptual ideal, to the practical implementation, to day-to-day living. In his recent works based on the research on life’s energy, Zheng Guogu tries to reveal the energy flow lurking in the process of perception, the vibration of color frequencies is closely related to the workings of human arteries and veins, as well as the operation of the universe. Furthermore, the vibration is the tempering of an existential insight. Zheng Guogu is also one of the founding members of Yangjiang Group, an artist collective focusing on experimental Chinese calligraphy, founded in 2002 in Yangjiang.
Zheng Guogu’s principal solo exhibitions include: Zheng Guogu: Visionary Transformation, MoMA PS1, New York, 2019; Zheng Guogu: The Winding Path to Trueness, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2017; Zheng Guogu: Ubiquitous Plasma, OCAT Xi'an, Xi’an, 2015. He has participated in international exhibitions and bienniales including: The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9), The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Queensland, Australia; Social Factory - 10th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, 2014; Farewell to Post-Colonialism - 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, 2008; Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007; Canton Express in Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2003.