Arts Thread

In his thesis exhibition COLORING BOOK, Tianxing Xu (M.F.A. painting) presents a collection of paintings, prints, and artist’s books that serve as building plans for an imagined amusement park. Through the schematics of this unrealized fairground, Tianxing Xu explores the concept of actualization, rendering objects and spaces as distorted, fragmented, and blurred, constructing chaos via absolute order. For Tianxing Xu, the works remain unfinished without the presence of the audience. In this exhibition, the artist invites viewers to participate in the works’ completion by coloring in a book of diagrams in the gallery. Revolving around themes of regret, unfulfilled promises, and a sense of distance, the personal stories embedded in Tianxing Xu’s works are private and ineffable. Like pages ripped from a diary, each work seeks to capture the emotions of an important day long forgotten. In the works on view, images from the artist’s memory appear overexposed and spotty, as if scorching sunlight has bleached their surface, prolonging his search for clarity in recollection.