ShanghART Gallery is honored to present Geng Dayou’s debut solo exhibition You Can Dance When No One Is Watching on July 15, curated by Chen Yunyao.

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Geng Dayou’s artistic practice focuses on the projection of individual states onto everyday objects. Drawing on the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the artist upholds the romanticist core inherent in his creation, interweaving personal experience, the affect of everyday objects, and spatial memory. Through this approach, he conjures a pervasive, haunting sense of nihility, and constructs a mimicry that lingers within the context of social reality.

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As the exhibition’s title, You Can Dance When No One Is Watching is built upon the absence of a subject. The resulting excess of subjectivity and lack of selfhood become not only the artist’s observation of and response to the fading of subjective participation in mass popular culture and the deconstructed sublime amid complex social conditions, but also the creative pursuit and practical language through which the artist seeks to reshape order and pursue spiritual transcendence within modernity. It frames an overarching structure defined by cyclical infinity, nihility, and a paradoxical yearning for termination coupled with unmoored aimlessness.

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Or rather, as a universal experience shared by the majority, You Can Dance When No One Is Watching becomes an opening ceremony for our collective resistance against nihility.

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香格纳画廊将于7月15日荣幸呈现耿大有首次个展“无人时，可以翩翩起舞”，由陈鋆尧策展。耿大有的创作聚焦于个体状态在日常物上的投射，借由“整体剧场（Gesamtkunstwerk）”的观念，艺术家延续了其创作中的浪漫主义内核，将个人经历、对日常物的情状（affect）与空间记忆相勾连，并借此营造一种挥之不去的“虚无性”，建立起萦绕于社会情境下的拟态。

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作为展览标题，“无人时，可以翩翩起舞”建立在主语的缺位之上，由此体现出的主体性的剩余和自我的缺失，成为艺术家在面对复杂的社会状况下，对大众流行文化中主体性参与的消逝和被解构的崇高感的观察与反馈，也成为艺术家意图在现代性中重塑秩序与找寻精神超越的创作追求与实践语言。它架起一种循环往复的无尽、虚无、渴望终止又漫无目的的整体结构。又或者，作为出现在多数人身上的普遍经历，“无人时，可以翩翩起舞”成为了一场共同抵抗虚无的开幕式。

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Publications

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ArtRreview Asia: Geng Dayou’s Playful, Nihilistic Sculpture：

https://artreview.com/geng-dayou-when-no-one-is-around-dance-gracefully-shanghart-shanghai-review/

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emergent magazine：

https://www.emergentmag.com/articles/when-no-one-is-around-dance-gracefully

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Life and Arts 集锦：

https://www.gengdayou.art/_files/ugd/975f41_87fac62b9c024b5ba2ddc5194ab69c7c.pdf

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​Jiazazhi 假杂志：

https://www.gengdayou.art/_files/ugd/975f41_87fac62b9c024b5ba2ddc5194ab69c7c.pdf