《实 · 空》 Holding Time, Solo Exhibition at Esplanade, Singapore

2023

Bound by the structures of fast-paced, commodified time, it is often difficult for us to truly inhabit time. Xinwei Che’s practice explores how we may practice being in time by observing and attending to material processes that unfold and evolve gradually. Holding Time 《实 · 空》offers a glimpse of the deep time held within geological cycles and intimate gestures of touch, a silent core of the hours that sits beneath the rush of the everyday. Engaging with clay and traditional Chinese herbs through performance-installations, Che attempts to deepen and expand our experience of time by practising material rituals. Clay is eroded from the earth’s crust by forces of wind and water over millennia, while the herbs yield vivid colours that shift with their growth cycles. The stains, installations, photography and video work in this exhibition allude to and capture these materials in moments of change – drying, cracking, soaking, melting, seeping and spreading – revealing time through attention.