"Division" is a contemporary schism that reflects the contradictions between one's thoughts and expressions. "Compromise," when used to describe an artwork, is also thoroughly derogatory, suggesting a lack of creativity and weak methodology: the attempt to innovate by merely reconciling fragments that cater to existing narratives. Both phenomena are common issues in contemporary art. However, my intention is not to criticize; instead, I am intrigued by the possibility that these two symptoms reveal a universal principle underlying cultural production.

In recent years, media and narrative have been my primary focus. The ongoing cycle of division and compromise is a tension inherent in the evolution of both media and story telling. The works in this exhibition address this tension and deliberately attempt to transform it into a methodology, using the forces of division and compromise as tools— both actively and with detachment.

The 3-channel film Watershed is an escape from daily perception, drawing from an ancient road between Chongqing and Guizhou, now hidden within the city’s infrastructure. It intentionally exiles the bodily perception of routine spaces into a marginal state. The eponymous essay film in the exhibition, Division and Compromise: On the Geography of Images, was completed after the DRC No.12 sponsored artist residency in Changbai Mountain, Jilin Province. The work reconciles multiple contexts and clues within its narrative structure, juxtaposing the production of the art system itself with the historical evolution of media within the same thread, all of which are related to fieldwork and the boundaries of reality. The purpose remains: How can we understand today’s complex world?

The medium of painting, with its unique characteristics, is well-suited to compress my perceptions of different geographical spaces onto a single plane. However the new paintings further attempt to explore how to express the theme of geographical space within the flatness of the painting language itself.

                                                                                                                                                   —Yu Guo