Within the lingering long river of Time

Curator: Zhang Siyong

Exhibition Execution: Li Qingxia, Zhang Zhibei

Exhibition Coordination: Tao Tao

Ⅰ Reconstructing the Grammar of Time

April 28, 2026 – June 18, 2026

Lei Ziren, Che Jianquan

Hua Qing, Zhou Song

Jiang Miao, Xia Jianning, Qing Taimao

Hippersh Paulaži

Calcas James

Ernest García Peña

Ⅱ Prophecy of Time

April 20, 2026 – July 20, 2026

Wang Fei, Zhou Song, Wang Zun

Huang Shan, Ding Hao

Qing Taimao, Zhu Mingtao

Sun Xiaochen, He Zubin

Lan Yi, Pan Gang, Zhang Zhen, Zhang Siyong

Ⅲ Time Chronicles: Fairy Tales on the Page

April 20 – July 20, 2026

Andrew Wyeth

Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-Ki

Ding Xiongquan, Ding Shaoguang

Chen Danqing, Lei Ziren

Organizer: Beijing Millennium Time Art Center

Co-organizer: Millennium Time Gallery

Support: Longtang Cultural and Creative Park, Shunyi District, Beijing

Exhibition Venue: Millennium Time Art Center, A6, Longtang Cultural and Creative Park, No. 28 Longtang Road, Shunyi District, Beijing

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In This Long River Called Time

Zhang Siyong

As Heidegger once said, “Time is not something that exists already; it is temporality that allows existence to be revealed.” Time is never a homogeneous, flowing physical scale, but rather a living field that carries the perception of existence, spiritual memory, and the changes of the times. This exhibition, with its core theme “In This Long River Called Time,” metaphorically compares time to a continuously flowing river, echoing Bergson’s concept of “duration” time. Time, in its constantly changing, merging, and overlapping form, accommodates the accumulation of the past, the present presence, and the imagination of the future.

Exhibition Scene 1

In the contemporary art field, artistic creation has always been a spiritual act by which humanity confronts the passage of time, freezes traces of existence, and reconstructs its understanding of time and space. The rhythm of modern society has deconstructed the traditional linear view of time, leading to a fragmented and subjective perception of time. Art, therefore, becomes a crucial vehicle for unraveling the order of time and questioning the essence of existence. This exhibition is structured around three narrative units: Media Reconstruction, Spiritual Metaphor, and Historical Engraving. It integrates diverse artistic languages, including contemporary ink painting, oil painting, mixed media, glass art, sculpture, ceramics, and classic prints, linking the creative achievements of artists from China and abroad. Responding to the philosophical issues of time through artistic practice, it explores the intertextual relationship between temporality and contemporary art. Through the fusion and collision of philosophical reflections on time and slices of the era, it seeks to explore the artistic innovation of contemporary art in expressing time and space, allowing artworks to become spiritual testaments flowing in the river of time, possessing both ephemeral and eternal qualities.
Exhibition Scene 2

I. Reconstructing the Grammar of Time
This unit is summarized as “Reconstructing the Grammar of Time,” pointing to the deconstruction and reconstruction of the inherent order of time expression. Foucault proposed that “time possesses its own rules of configuration, and art can rewrite the arrangement of space and time.” The so-called grammar of time is the creative logic and visual rules followed by art in depicting, interpreting, and defining time. Traditional art often follows a linear temporal sequence to complete its creative expression, while the breakthrough of contemporary art lies in breaking the established temporal paradigm and reconstructing a visual language of time belonging to the contemporary context through diverse media.

Lei Ziren’s works: “Nuts” / “Green Shade Covering the Fields”
Qing Taimao’s work, “The Void – Night”
Che Jianquan’s work “Pavilion/Moment No. 8”

Contemporary ink painting, within a contextualized spiritual orientation, creates a distant temporal form that evokes the predicament of reality or the realm of nothingness. Lei Ziren and Qing Taimao, in their ink paintings, transcend traditional narrative sequences, using spiritual brushstrokes to point out the cyclical view of time within the contemporary aesthetic system. Che Jianquan’s contemplative and silent “A Moment,” Hua Qing’s “The Mathematical Principle of Flower Blooming,” and Zhou Song’s “New World,” among other conceptual paintings, rely on the inherent tension between constructiveness and existence within texture, overflowing instantaneous emotions beyond the viewer’s sight. Jiang Miao and Xia Jianning’s mixed-media paintings are built upon a masterful microscopic carving of color fields, lines, natural fluids, and even spiritual energy, layering together a creative form that combines simplicity with complexity, directly externalizing the material traces that are constantly accumulated and deposited over time. The contemporary glass art creations of the two Hungarian participating artists, Hsipoša Báraž and Carl Kess James, are noteworthy. They embody the transparent and solidified material and visual characteristics of glass, and put into practice Benjamin’s statement that “matter itself retains the aura of time.” Glass can both reflect flowing light and shadow and solidify fleeting scenes, thus completing the physical preservation of flowing time through its material properties.

Hua Qing’s work, “The Mathematical Principles of Flower Blooming”
Jiang Miao’s work, “The Cycle of Beginnings”

Information: Jiang Miao’s work won the Gold Medal for Mixed Media at the 15th Florence International Art Biennale in 2025.

Contemporary glass works by Hungarian artists

Different media possess unique temporal expressive attributes. The artists in this section have broken free from the constraints of objective time and actively established entirely new grammars of temporal narrative. They have dissolved the regularity of physical time, integrated the Eastern concept of continuous time with Western modern spatiotemporal thinking, and used media experiments to recreate the form of time, demonstrating that contemporary art possesses the creative power to rewrite the visual form of time and enrich the dimensions of temporal expression.

Zhou Song’s work “New World II”
Xia Jianning’s work “Microcosm 20251227”

II. Prophecies of Time The exhibition section titled “Prophecies of Time” focuses on the spiritual omens hidden within time, transforming the life insights, epochal signs, and existential reflections contained in the flow of time into artistic metaphors. Simmel once argued that “time shapes human life experience, and the imprints of human life, in turn, interpret the profound meaning of time.” Prophecies themselves possess an element of secrecy, foreshadowing, and insight; they are the secret codes of time born from the intertwining of individual life and the development of the era, accumulated over the years. Compared to the external visual shaping of time, this section delves into the intrinsic spiritual dimension of time, excavating the spiritual core behind time.

Exhibition Scene 3
Exhibition Site 4

This section encompasses multiple creative forms, including oil painting, sculpture, ceramics, and water-based media, with artists interpreting time based on their own life experiences. Among them, Wang Fei reconstructs history within a mirror image, Wang Zun travels among human traces and divine miracles, and Zhu Mingtao captures the ebb and flow of natural time. They express the changing states of mind brought about by the passage of time. He Zubin immerses himself in the debate between the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the physical life, while Zhang Zhen ascends amidst the swaying and vibrant hallucinations of youth. A myriad of states are released in boundless expression. Collectively, they present a stream of consciousness writing about the causes of life and cultural reflections within the torrent of time. Sculptors Sun Xiaochen and Huang Shanshu skillfully use the handcrafted language of contemporary ceramics to interpret the power of time’s sculpting, refining matter into an artistic spirit, much like life undergoing transformation through the polishing of time. Ding Hao’s sculptural creations use the physical form of space to transform the heart of nature with natural objects, freezing the state of life and endowing the intangible time with a concrete spiritual outline.

Wang Fei’s work, “The Imperial Han Chariot”
Exhibition Scene 5
Exhibition site 6

Time is not only the process of the passage of matter, but also the process of the accumulation of spiritual memory. This section once again showcases contemporary artist Zhou Song’s abstract logic of entropy increase or entropy change, and Qing Taimao’s “Moonlight Walk” series of natural landscapes. Unlike the previous section, these works are predominantly black and white, almost like an emergent motivation and instinct. These artists’ works, both old and new, confirm Gadamer’s artistic philosophy that “understanding is always temporal, and artworks carry the historical perspective bestowed by the times.” The works become prophecies for interpreting time, recording both the spiritual transformation of the creator’s individual life over time and subtly reflecting the current state of development. By capturing the spiritual signals of time within the context of a changing era, artistic creation achieves a profound advancement from depicting temporal phenomena to comprehending the core spirit of time.

Exhibition Hall 7

III. A Chronicle of Time – Immortal Traces on Prints

“A Chronicle of Time – Immortal Traces on Prints” traces the timeline of art through classic printmaking. The artistic qualities of printmaking, through replication and preservation, make it the most representative art form for engraving time and preserving classics. As Valéry said, “The reason why classic art is immortal is that it can transcend the passage of time and continue to resonate with the spirit of different eras.” Printmaking involves multiple processes, including plate making, engraving, and printing; the creative process itself is a long journey of time, and every engraving mark is an artistic imprint left from a dialogue with time.

This section selects classic printmaking works by important artists such as Andrew Wyeth’s mixed media prints, Wu Guanzhong’s collotype prints, Zao Wou-Ki and Ding Xiongquan’s lithographs, Ding Shaoguang and Chen Danqing’s silkscreen prints, and Lei Ziren’s copperplate coloring. These works transcend geographical and national boundaries and creative periods, connecting the development chronology of modern and contemporary printmaking art. Printmaking possesses the artistic characteristics of being reproducible, preserveable, and inheritable. Unlike instantaneous creations, printmaking naturally possesses the artistic quality of resisting the erosion of time. For example, one of the exhibits, a lithograph by Zao Wou-Ki created in 1962, has been perfectly preserved to this day. Presented before our eyes, it still retains a vibrant artistic vitality, directly demonstrating the timelessness of art that transcends the limitations of physical time.

Exhibition site 8
Sun Xiaochen’s “Click Series”

While the first two sections explored art and reflected on the spirit of the present, this section looks back at the past, tracing and preserving historical time. Following the previous discussion of creation within the flow of time, it focuses on classic works that bear the marks of time, glimpsing the evolution of artistic aesthetics through comparisons of prints from different periods. Simultaneously, echoing the overall imagery of a long river in the exhibition, past classic art transforms into hidden traces preserved in the river of time, proving that true artistic creation can transcend the torrent of time and retain its enduring artistic value.

Wu Guanzhong’s collotype prints and Zao Wou-Ki’s lithographs
Ding Xiongquan’s printmaking works

As the curator of this thematic exhibition that integrates different states of time, I offer my personal, subjective interpretation of this meticulously crafted visual experience, while also focusing on the holistic structural considerations within the curatorial framework: The exhibition’s three sections form a progressive academic structure, moving from the surface to the core and from the present to the past, creating a complete and layered narrative system of time-based art. From the first section’s reshaping of the visual form of time through media, to the second section’s deciphering of time’s hidden prophecies through spiritual perception, and finally to the third section’s use of classic prints to preserve the traces of time, the exhibition completes a full artistic exploration chain of “creation of time-based forms—interpretation of the spirit of time—preservation of time-based history.”

Works by (Hungary) Carl Zeiss James

From a philosophical perspective, the exhibition deeply resonates with Western art philosophies such as Bergson’s theory of the duration of time, Heidegger’s view of existential time, and Benjamin’s halo theory, while also taking into account Eastern traditional aesthetics of time, thus constructing a fusion of Eastern and Western thought on time art. Temporality forms a close intertextual relationship with contemporary art; contemporary multi-media creations adapt to the characteristics of time perception in the present era, interpreting the appearance of time in the modern context through artistic innovation; while classic prints build a bridge between the past and the present, proving that amidst the changes of the times, art’s pursuit of the eternity of time has never ceased.

Exhibition site 9
Exhibition site 10
Exhibition Scene 11
Exhibition Scene 12
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Exhibition Scene 14
Zhu Mingtao’s work “Natural Light”
Exhibition site 15
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Exhibition site 17
Exhibition Scene 18

The entire exhibition uses the river of time as its core narrative vehicle, allowing artworks from different generations, regions, and media to converge and coexist. While integrating philosophical reflections on time with the development of the times, it clearly demonstrates the continuous exploration and innovation of contemporary art on the theme of time, allowing viewers to perceive the form of time’s flow and experience the unique spiritual depth that art bestows upon time.

Beijing Millennium Time Art Center, May 2026