Guo Hongwei and Mary Simpson’s artworks are included in Mana Contemporary’s exhibition, 44 Signs of the Times, curated by Owen Duffy, director of the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University. The show will be on view from May 20, 2021 until July 23, 2021.
44 Signs of the Times is an exhibition of works of art that describe the strangeness of recent life. Rather than following a prescriptive or diagnostic approach, these 44 works of art – made before, during, and after 2020 – map pervasive and even sublime feelings of estrangement from reality as it once was.
The exhibition divides into seven porous sections that engage with themes related to recent events: spread, escape, precarity, languish, continuities, filtration, and acts of God. Guo Hongwei’s artwork offers visions of how people have attempted ESCAPE from the tragedy and dullness of reality. 2020’s ongoing tide of inertia, that one is captured in a state of LANGUISH and embedded in Mary Simpson’s work.