Mocube is honored to announce the solo exhibition "Hazy Blue" by artist Dong Bingxin, opening on November 1, 2025. The exhibition will feature a focused presentation of the artist's latest works from two series: "Home Feast" and "Figures." This also marks Dong Bingxin's first solo exhibition at Mofang. The exhibition will run through December 7, 2025.

Home Feast

The stemmed bowl is embedded in my memory as the most important ritual of the year. After leaving home at 16 to study in Beijing, I could only return during holidays, making these two breaks particularly precious. The winter vacation coincides with the Chinese New Year, the most significant festival of the year. On New Year's Eve, the entire family would start preparing for the "New Year's Eve feast" from the moment we woke up, bustling all day long. It wasn't until the stemmed bowls were placed on the table that the meal truly began.

To the people of Wenzhou, the stemmed bowl is more than just a container for food; it is a cultural symbol and emotional bond passed down through generations. This series of works, centered on the Wenzhou stemmed bowl, captures the emotional memories of my youth.

Stemmed bowls are also commonly found in the dowries of Wenzhou women. As they marry and start new families, these bowls are solemnly brought out only on New Year's Eve. In the Wenzhou New Year's Eve feast—the most important banquet known as the "New Year's Eve feast"—the stemmed bowl plays an indispensable role. Whether it's the color, shape, number, the food placed inside, or the arrangement, everything carries hopes and blessings. In Wenzhou culture, red symbolizes prosperity and good fortune, representing a thriving life; the stemmed shape conveys the wish for "steady advancement"; and the word for "bowl" in the Wenzhou dialect is a homophone for "stability," symbolizing safety and security.

Stemmed bowls typically come in sets of ten, used during the New Year's Eve feast to hold ten cold dishes arranged in a circle on the table, embodying the hope for "perfection." A slice of red radish (called "red vegetable head" in the local dialect) placed on each dish signifies "good fortune" and "auspicious luck," further enhancing the festive atmosphere and symbolic meaning.

Through depictions of stemmed bowls and the authentic Wenzhou New Year dishes they hold, this series seeks to showcase not only the beauty of the object's form but also the cultural significance of the food within. The paintings feature dishes such as crab, symbolizing "steady progress" in career; dried fish, representing "abundance year after year"; dragon fruit, embodying "vibrancy and success"; tomatoes, signifying "everything going as wished"; duck tongue, symbolizing "being the choicest pick"; and dried shrimp, symbolizing "completeness from start to finish." Through visual means, the works evoke Wenzhou's culinary culture and its pursuit of values like reunion, auspiciousness, and happiness. They are a recreation of the warm New Year atmosphere and family memories cherished by generations, with these red stemmed bowls continuing to transmit emotions and rituals across changing times.

Figures

The rainy season is a slow, lingering entanglement. In my memory, Wenzhou, this southern city, is shrouded in rain for most of the year—a fine, incessant drizzle. From the humid southern winds to the plum rain season, and from typhoon days to mid-autumn, rain connects the four seasons of Wenzhou. Unlike the sudden downpours of the north, Wenzhou's rain is gentle, falling softly with pauses in between. The city often sinks into a cool, misty haze, with moist air carrying the scent of soil, green grass, and the mustiness seeping from old walls and wooden cracks. Water droplets trace long paths as they fall from corners, high and low. During breaks in the rain, sunlight spilling through the clouds casts a golden hue over the damp rooftops, alleys, and water surfaces—a particularly poignant and fleeting beauty.

Using fine brushwork as my medium, I gather these fragments of memory, soaked by rain and wrinkled by time, under my brush. I aim to present a micro-narrative quietly fermenting in the dampness.

As a child, I lived with my parents and grandparents in a village on the city's outskirts. The village was small, with narrow alleys and houses close together, making it easy to visit neighbors just a few steps away.

The television was the magical window of my youth. For a long time, after finishing homework, I would crouch in front of the TV. As evening fell, the sound of rain outside would patter softly, while dialogues from the TV intertwined with the sounds of cooking from the kitchen. The romance deep within my heart likely sprouted from such background noises.

My paintings seek to reconstruct that spiritual homeland, steeped in mist and electromagnetic waves, through hazy tones and dreamlike scenes. It is a utopia that quietly grew amidst economic boom and the wave of visual media, belonging both to my personal memories and to the collective resonance of an entire generation.

Every line on the silk, repeatedly outlined, layered, and textured, holds a lingering dampness. They are not merely traces of ink and color but moist memories permeating the depths of life. This dampness is not just a physical presence but something seeping into the texture of time and the folds of life—a shared spiritual memory of our generation. It continually evaporates and condenses within my life, eventually transforming into an endless rain, enveloping all the farewells left unsaid and the distant moments of the past.