'Ding Yi: Prediction and Retrospection' at Château La Coste, Aix en Provence, France

9 July 2024

From 3 July – 16 September, Château La Coste presents Ding Yi's exhibition 'Prediction and Retrospection' featuring approximately 30 works on canvas, wood and paper, created over the last 40 years. Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and Western aesthetics, the exhibition presents both experimental, process-based and traditional approaches to contemporary painting.

During his career, Ding has applied such methodology in his studio practice to explore personal and societal cross-cultural perspectives in relation to fast-paced development, urban environment and human culture in general. The 'predictive' element referred to in the title underscores the use of the cross sign, whether a '+' or an 'x', as an emblematic gesture and mark. Ding's practice not only links Western and Eastern formal aesthetic approaches but prefigures the 'absolute matrix' of the binary code, one of today's most prominent visual tropes, now largely seen in the supercharged development of the digital realm.

The 'retrospective' aspect is instead manifested in the selection of works from the 1980s to the present, a temporal arch that has seen dramatic societal development such as the fall of Soviet Communism, the decline of the American dream, and the simultaneous iconic rise of China and the Southeast Asia region. Ding Yi's work, in its integrity and motif-based approach, provides a lens through which the contingent results of such epochal events can be read, enabling the viewer to experience this timeframe as a unicum of human culture.

Find out more via Château La Coste.

Image: Courtesy of Château La Coste, photo by Stephane Aboudaram | WE ARE CONTENTS(S).