与中国的当代艺术经常表现出来的对宏大叙事——包括历史意识、社会情怀、理论雄心、景观强度等——的追逐正好相反的是，很多艺术家的工作中包含着对于微小事物、微妙感性的偏好。这种偏好不仅是趣味问题，更关涉着艺术家的方法，他们从切身的、具体的问题与经验出发，即使这些问题与经验并不显得“重大”。因此，这些艺术家的很多作品表露出了对那些曾经流行或正在流行的景观倾向的疏远，既包括视觉、形式景观，也包括理论、话语景观。

“微物之神”来自印度作家阿兰达蒂的小说，小说中的儿童视角似乎给叙述加了一个放大镜，从中看到的微小、细碎让那个抽象、整体而合理的既定世界显得十分可疑。但在这个展览中，艺术中的“微物”不仅包括客观世界中的小事物，还包含时间性与关系性，即迅速的或缓慢的、微弱的或敏感的，这些不易察觉的存在属性。作为一个展览，“微物之神”也强调展览空间本身的价值，而不希望它只是一个假设的白盒子，我们将会把作品与建筑、环境结合起来，形成一个个可感的微观语境。

——策展人：鲍栋

Exhibition Introduction

Quite a contrary to the trend in Chinese contemporary art that often manifests grand narratives, including historical consciousness, social feelings, theoretical ambitions, intensity of landscape, etc. - many artists' works contain a preference of subtle things and sensibilities. This preference is not only a matter of personal interest, but a method of the artist as well, starting with a concrete question and experience that is of personal concern, even though they do not appear to be "significant". As a result, many of these artists' works reveal the alienation of those tendencies of landscapes which were once popular or are still popular at the moment, including both visual and formal landscapes, as well as theoretical and lingual landscapes.

The expression of "The God of Small Things" comes from the title of a novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy. The perspective of the child in the novel seems to have added a magnifying glass to the narration, the smallness and fragmentation that the child sees makes the abstract, integrated and reasonably established world seem dubious. However in this exhibition, "micro objects" in the context of art include not only small things in the objective world, but also temporal and relational features, or the imperceptible existential properties that are rapidor slow, weak or sensitive. The exhibition "The God of Small Things "also emphasizes the value of the exhibition space itself, and does not expect the space to be just a white cube. We combine the works with the architecture as well as the environment, to form a subtle micro context that is available through an intuitive sense.  

---Curator: Bao Dong

狮語画廊非常荣幸邀请到策展人鲍栋策划2018年度”新动力”展览——微物之神。本次展览是狮語画廊第六届新动力主题展，也是画廊十周年特别系列展览之一。作为狮語画廊年度主题展览之一，“新动力”以发掘当代艺术的动力为出发点，从展期设立到展览立场，再到策展方式都颇具特色：这个系列展览一般设立在每年的春天，3-5月份，映照大地回春、万物苏醒的自然规律，探索当代艺术经过一轮轮的沉淀、筛选后呈现新迹象与动态；同时，“新动力”强调的是内在的驱动力，探索推动当代艺术发展的新颖的、内在的力量。因此，我们邀请策展人为展览设立主题，并挑选艺术家与参展作品，邀请观众参加座谈讨论，展览呈现的是“开放式”状态，展览主题是策展人、艺术家、画廊与艺术观众一起探讨的索引与方向。

It is Leo Gallery’s honour to hold in Shanghai the "New Force" exhibition in 2018 - The God of Small Things with curator Bao Dong. This is the sixth "New Force" exhibition, as well as one of Leo Gallery’s ten-year anniversary exhibition series. As one of the annual thematic exhibitions of Leo Gallery, "New Force" explores the motivation of contemporary art, and holds distinguishing features in the exhibition dates, concepts as well as the curatorial approach - The "New Force" series are held in springs, usually from March to May, reflecting the natural laws of rejuvenation and the awakening of all beings, exploring the new signs andmovements of contemporary art that is in a rapid process of the new superseding the old. Meanwhile, "New Force" explores the intrinsic driving force which nurtures contemporary art development. Therefore, we have invited the curator to set the theme for this exhibition, to select artists and exhibits accordingly, and to invite audiences to participate in discussions. The exhibition, New Force VI - The God of Small Things, presents an "open" status with curators, artists, gallery and audiences discovering the themes and possibilities altogether.

陈友桐 Chen Youtong

陈友桐培育和控制微生物的生长，在不同的微生物之间促发一种生长、对抗、死亡的自然关系，并在这个过程中，让微生物群落形成一种直观的自组织结构，以此呈现出了一种微观世界的活力。

Chen Youtong cultivates and controls the growth of microorganisms and promotes a natural relationship between growth, confrontation, and death among different the microorganisms. In this process, the microbial community forms an intuitive self-organizing structure, presenting the vitality of a microscopic world.

董大为 Dong Dawei

董大为通过特殊的笔与纸，把媒介性在一系列的形象主题下发挥到了极致，并把观众的注意力集中到了图像与物性之间的微妙互衍上。

Through a special pen and paper, Dong Dawei exerts medialism to the extreme under a series of image themes and focuses the audience's attention on the delicate interaction between images and physical properties.

何翔宇 He Xiangyu

何翔宇的《直线》与《橄榄油-过去的只是序曲》分别在空间与时间的两个维度中试探着观念与感觉的最小限度，让观念规则与事实例外之间张力获得了一种可感的存在。

He Xiangyu's "Straight Line" and "Olive Oil - Past is Prologue" explores the minimum of ideas and feelings in two dimensions: space and time, and offers sensible feelings to the tension between conceptual rules and factual exceptions.

胡任乂 Hu Renyi

胡任乂在无数个装药品的小玻璃瓶上描绘了各种模样的细菌，用夸张且主观的色彩把它们变成了表现主义风格的形式，使“细菌”的形象充满着文化的气息。

Hu Renyi paints various kinds of bacteria on numerous small glass bottles containing medicines. He uses exaggerated and subjective colors to turn them into expressionistic styles, making the images of “bacteria” full of cultural atmosphere.

蒋志 Jiang Zhi

蒋志艺术创作的一个重要维度是发现和再造出日常生活中的细节，两只手电筒的相交的光圈，铁削在磁力下的奇妙扭结，这些看似不起眼的事物被转换进某种“微言大义”的感性启示中。

An important dimension of Jiang Zhi’s artistic creation is to discover and recreate the details of everyday life. The intersecting apertures of two flashlights and the magnetic kinks are transformed into something of a kind of sensual revelation that carries “sublime words with deep meaning”.

郎粲 Lang Can

在郎粲的最新作品中，她试图以最少的语言去叙述，场景被压缩在与播放屏幕一致的黑色的平面上，而情节则只是一个个突兀的机械破坏行为。

In Lang Can's latest work, she tries to narrate in minimized language. The scene is compressed on a black surface that is consistent with the playing screen, while the plot shows only sudden mechanical destructions.

陆平原 Lu Pingyuan

陆平原用微小精悍的故事把艺术世界及展览环境与想象的奇幻世界连接了起来，给日益枯燥的艺术话语注入了民间传说、恐怖故事等绵延不断的亚文化传统。

Lu Pingyuan connected the art world and the exhibition environment with the imaginary fantasy world with his short and concise stories. He infuses increasingly boring art discourses with everlasting subcultural traditions such as folklore and horror stories.

沈瑞筠 Shen Ruijun

沈瑞筠所投入的是一种统觉的艺术，与之对应的是一个杂乱的、复调的、不可规约的世界，一种面对世界本身偶然性的世界观，一种以此为机缘的艺术实践。

Shen Ruijun’s art is a kind of general art, which corresponds to a disorderly, polyphony, non-statutory world. Her works present a world outlook that confronts the world itself by chance - and her artistic practice takes this as an opportunity.

王恩来 Wang Enlai

王恩来一直在发现并促成着事物之间的可能联系，他给特定的事物施加外力，或者改变它们的环境，使事物在使用价值之外释放出存在的活性。

Wang Enlai has been discovering and facilitating the possible connections between things. He applies external forces to particular things or changes their environment so that things can release their activity beyond their value in use.

张晋 Zhang Jin

作为化学博士的张晋把科学图像观念纳入了自己的摄影作品中，他用实验室式的工作方式把常见的事物如刀片、火焰、荧光转换成为一种间接的视觉经验，一种日常之下的微小秘密。

Zhang Jin, a Ph.D. in chemistry, incorporates the concept of scientific images into his own photographic works. He uses lab-like working methods to convert common things such as blades, flames, and fluorescence into an indirect visual experience, creating tiny secrets beneath daily experiences.

张雪瑞 Zhang Xuerui

张雪瑞的绘画把结构与色彩控制在一个尽量精确的尺度内，让格子与灰色形成一种确切的秩序，在这种秩序中，她讨论的不仅是绘画的规则，也在探测着感知的细微程度。

Zhang Xuerui's paintings control the structures and colours in a precise scale so that the lattice and the gray colour form an exact order. In this order, she discusses not only the rules of painting, but also the subtlety of perception.