The Duet’s Carnival
Tianxing Xu Solo Exhibition
July 18 - August 1, 2025
Location: Gallery 456 | Chinese American Arts Council
Opening Reception: July 18, 2025 | 5-8 pm
I came to play, alongside my second. Our yellow duck pedal boats keep bouncing into each other. My second points to my duck’s reflection on the other side of the water. It joined with its own second- a reflection as yellow and as shinier. Seeing a pile of plastic toys behind a blue banister, I started to count. But is sorting numerical? I nudged the joy stick, extending my hand into a claw in a transparent machine. Is the prize for me or for her? We tried to re-merge into one as the merry-go-round pushed my body into her soul. That attempt was futile. Later that day, the swing I sat on was pushed forward. I thought it was my second, but it wasn’t because she was right there to my left. Even though she seemed frozen, I had a strong feeling that it was her immobility that became my impetus. Tired out, we arrived at a number of chairs formed in neat lines facing the stage. Nobody was performing. I wanted to rest at the back, but she hoped to rush to the front. As we parted to sit separately, the carnival reached its climax when I saw numbers printed on the back of the seats. Was I one or two, I wondered.
I came to play, alongside my first. Our yellow duck pedal boats kept bouncing into each other when I saw his duck turn into two, one above the water and one under. He was on both of them, and so was the moon which had become squishy. We saw a pile of plastic toys behind a blue banister, paired and numbered just like the two of us, one, two, one two. We stood in front of the claw machine. He played while I was praying for his failure, because a captured toy loses its first life inside the crystal box. We tried to re-merge into one as the merry-go-round pushed my body into her soul. That attempt was futile. Later that day we went to the swings. I didn’t wish to move, but happily enjoyed watching my first move. It was only in two directions though, back, forth, back, forth. Tired out, we arrived at a number of chairs formed in neat lines facing the stage. Nobody was performing. We sat down right next to each other, and sang in unison.
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Tianxing Xu’s solo exhibition “The Duet’s Carnival” showcases 7 pairs of works, including 10 paintings, 2 works on paper, and a sculpture co-created by Xu and artist Sangmin Lee during their residency at NARS Foundation.
Xu’s works began with memories of regret, unfulfilled promises, and panic. There are no better places than the carnival - the ultimate controlled chaos to blend euphoria with hysteria. Largely influenced by Jean Baudrillard, Xu’s works, as iterations of simulacrums, substitute the signs of the real to create false orders. Numbers, glitches, color codings appear in his works repetitively only to hint at a fictional logic. Whereas Baudrillard believes a carnival (in his original example, Disneyland) functions as a “deterrence machine,” Xu’s false orders become lures, quite literally “sugar-coating” the era of simulation that we had already entered.
In this solo exhibition, all works appear in pairs, providing a separate line of physical dichotomy in addition to the “reality vs. simulacra” rhetoric which through-lines Xu’s practice. If Baudrillard believes that the confusion of the medium and the message is a dire consequence of the process of simulation, Xu urges us to at least bring a plus one, even if it is yourself. Perhaps we are able to form a duet with our doppelgangers to sing in unison.