Sensory Syndrome — Cang Xin Visual Works Exhibition
Dates: June 1 – June 30, 2025
Artist: Cang Xin
Curator: iion Ho
Organizer: ART ON SPACE
Academic Support: China Modern Art Archive (CMAA), Peking University
Venue: Art On Space, Chui Hong, Foshan, China
Prologue
In the context of digital deluge and sensory overload, we find ourselves caught in a maze built by images. Constantly projected, mirrored, and superimposed, the visual world gradually alienates human perception. At ART ON SPACE, Cang Xin—a pioneering figure known for exploring the triadic coordinates of body, spirit, and cosmos since the 1990s—presents an immersive image-based installation titled Sensory Syndrome.
This exhibition brings together three of his most emblematic series:
- Communication Series: Employing physical contact as primal language, these works explore energy exchange and boundaries on a subconscious level.
- Identity Exchange Series: A critical investigation into how the self is dismantled and reassembled through societal rituals and structures.
- Man and Sky as One Series: A poetic placement of the body at the nexus of nature and spirit, reflecting the holistic worldview of Eastern cosmology.
These works are not simply visual records of social symptoms—they are sensorial instruments, constructed through bodily experience. Rather than offer conclusions, they invite the audience to enter the internal architecture of “syndrome,” to sense the contemporary state of drifting identities, emotional disconnection, and the weightlessness of belief.
Two pivotal works are also recontextualized in this presentation:
- To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain — a milestone in the history of Chinese performance art.
- Shamanism Series — a continuation of Cang Xin’s inquiry into the metaphysics of boundary lifeforms.
Through moving images, these pieces are not just revisited but reactivated, echoing as spiritual relics from the performative field.
In a world saturated with images and consumed perception, we are left with a resonant question:
“Does what we perceive still belong to us?”
About the Artist: Cang Xin
Cang Xin was born in 1967 in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Initially trained in music at the Tianjin Academy of Music, he later pursued self-taught painting before joining the avant-garde community in Beijing’s “East Village” in the early 1990s. There, he emerged as a key figure in Chinese performance art.
Cang is best known for his boundary-pushing performance works, such as the Trampling Faces, Lick Series, and Virus Series. His iconic collaborative performance To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (1995) has become emblematic of China’s radical 1990s art scene. Cang’s practice is marked by a shamanic sensibility—his body becomes a spiritual medium to experience and interpret the world.
Rather than serving as acts of rebellion or protest, Cang’s performances reflect deeply on the psychological entrapment and existential anxiety of modern life. His ongoing works investigate the tension between the corporeal and the metaphysical, the natural and the constructed.
Exhibitions:
- Thunderclap, Arsenal Montreal, 2013
- Translation of Spirit, Chinese Cultural Center, San Diego, 2011
- Material Dojo, C-Space, Beijing, 2009
- Cang Xin’s Shamanic Vision, Space CAN, Seoul, 2009
- Cang Xin Mythology, Today Art Museum, Beijing, and Gallery 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong, 2008
- Translation of Survival, Espace Cultural Ample, Barcelona, 2007
- Identity Exchange, Red Mansion Foundation, London, 2006
- Constancy and Flux, Luxehills Art Museum, Chengdu, 2020
- New MoMA, Manhattan, New York, 2021
Cang Xin currently lives and works in Chengdu.