Street artists are often seen as outlaws on the other side of the system, breaking entrenched rules. However, it's hard to define exactly what is truly “street” when people from all regions and races are enjoying similar mediums and breaking laws and boundaries. It's now commonplace for self-proclaimed artists to paint on canvas. Hip-hop rappers are more likely to be photographed in art museums than showing off their expensive watches. The image of the artist in solitude is obsolete. Instead, the tattooed fine-artist with a pressed cap and now actively engages with the public through social media.

 

Chen Weihao (DAIV) is an emerging street artist from Shanghai who has been traveling back and forth between China and South Korea since 2019. He is the epitome of the so-called Instagram MZ artists who actively utilize graffiti and street art. He neither denies nor affirms his identity as a street artist, but rather honestly dreams of the clichéd image of the Korean MZ artist per his imagination. DAIV was introduced to street art through the internet, where it was popularized not in the back alleys of the city but in white cubes. He leaves graffiti all over Seoul, shoots rap music videos, collaborates with fashion models, and incorporates his own iconic cartoon characters into classical art. He is also not afraid to borrow characters from different street artists. For him, street art is not only a form to choose from, but a perspective that is both internal and external. As both a participant and an observer of art, the artist uploads in real-time his works and artistic process as they are created and transformed.

 

The variety of materials and techniques he posts online, including cartoon characters, a wide range of colors, spray paint and acrylics, and print media, are all wrappers for the artist's view of contemporary Asian culture. As the title of the exhibition suggests, his paintings depict modern cartoon characters in the style of archeological artifacts, folk paintings, or folktales. The works are fragile wire structures suspended in white space—unlike the heavy glass enclosures of archaeological artifacts in darkened rooms—and they vary in size from cityscapes to figure groups to still-lifes, and are filled with contemporary architecture and characters, both Eastern and Western. They reflect the artist's subjective taste for the traditional and the modern and are reminiscent of the crisis facing Asian countries with highly developed economies and rapid post-industrialization. DAIV has organized the exhibition around the theme of courtesy paintings, juxtaposing a new series of toy cars and real cars that he cherished as a child in polarizing scales.

 

The subtitle “Speed” in Asian Cultural Modernology: 1. Speed refers to the author's recollection of a childhood friend from the distant past amidst the fast-paced present. According to physics, speed is relative. Time passes differently for the observer and the actual object. In theory, a fast-moving object can be seen as moving away from the observer's past as they look toward the future. Works that remain stuck in time, such as paintings and sculptures, replay the past and present simultaneously depending on the viewer's perspective. While his new auto-racing and speed series are sourced in the toys and cartoons of his childhood, works such as “Sweet Home” are rooted in his personal experiences with isolation and solitude during the pandemic. DAIV’s works indicates an artist’s desire to both evoke his blissful youth and eschew the disturbing moments of his young adulthood.

 

Divided between two floors (the first and seventh) the exhibition imagines a racing track from a subjective and objective point of view, respectively. The two exhibition spaces like his works are created by the intersection of opposing perspectives and scales. Constructed of thin sheet metal and wire, the Potemkin façades allude to urban billboards, blank walls, or the theatrical urban development of Asia itself. The vanishing point created by this thin and long new false wall metaphorizes the perspective of being in the driver's seat of a real car. In stark contrast the seventh floor treats the toy cars suspended from the ceiling as if from a grandstand in a space surrounded by blue-lit still-lifes. In these two opposing exhibition spaces, we become both competitors and friends as we race down the street with the artist. Amongst the current of fashion models, rappers and idols, contemporary artists face friends, fans, and colleagues who reach only through social media under the thin veneer of relationships. Sometimes they can even be enemies who cause more pain than anyone else. However, the artist perhaps suggests 塑料袋友谊 [sùliàodài yǒuyì] (plastic bag friends) can be exactly what they seem to imply: not too close, but at a distance, so that they can run alongside and cheer each other on.

 

The artist invokes the automobile as a symbol of friendship (<友谊 [yǒuyì]>), but Roll UP, the largest painting in the exhibition at 118×236 cm, portends danger by demonstrating an imminent crash-and-burn. It further reveals the cause of such an accident can be through a terrible betrayal by someone as familiar as Mickey Mouse. From the artist's point of view, this act reflects the ebb and flow of socio-politics and culture. From neighboring countries clashing over political, social, and cultural differences to individual dreams hampered by social prejudice and hegemony, the artist further reflects on the difficulties of exhibiting and garnering public acclaim in other countries. Despite his trials and tribulations, DAIV continues his artistic activity in Seoul and attempts his first solo exhibition toward a future wherein those estranged through distance and those with faith and support in his artistry can understand and help each other despite differences in nationality and culture.