Xu Tan's Solo Exhibition at Vitamin Creative Space Explores Territory and Social Construction

Guangzhou-based artist Xu Tan presents a solo exhibition at Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, shifting focus from his long-term Keywords Project to issues of territory and social landscape. The show includes early works like Uniform Velocity, Variant Velocity No. 1 (1992), featuring fluorescent tubing and paintings referencing Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, highlighting concerns with territory as a social construct. Another installation, Problem-I (1995–6), uses slide projections to explore paradoxes in land ownership and legality, originally part of the 1996 group show Possibility – Big Tailed Elephant in Guangzhou. Newer works include Questions – Land, Soil (2013), developed after three months of local research, featuring a small-scale Mayan pyramid replica in a plastic box with soil samples, and 2013–2113 (2013), a bamboo structure projecting an image of a 2 x 2m plot of land Xu has legally designated as his property, to remain fallow for 100 years with inspections every five years. The exhibition traces Xu's practice back to his association with the Big Tail Elephant group in Guangdong Province in the early 1990s, emphasizing long-durational engagement with social change. It was first published in the November 2013 issue of ArtReview.