Roman Ondak

• Yuan Art Museum, Beijing (CN)
• 14.06.–12.10.2025

Participating artists: Ryan Gander, He Chi, Hu Qingtai, Klara Liden, Renata Lucas, Lai Chih-Sheng, Roman Ondak

The inertia of everyday life envelops our perception of the world. Social norms, cultural habits, and unconscious expectations all swift away the "abnormal", leaving behind only fragments deemed "rational". We believe we see truth, yet fail to realize it is merely an illusion – a projection of collective consensus. As a matter of fact, we are already living in a hyperreal age, in which the perpetually absorbed and neutralized hyperreality constantly reshapes and disciplines the present.

I see You, You see Me invites the audience to step outside established frameworks and reexamine the vulnerability and malleability of "reality". The participating artists manage to deconstruct the apparent stability of the everyday through video, installation, and interactive media: the once-familiar symbols are now displaced, coherent narratives disrupted, and sensory experiences reconfigured through contradictions. When the logic that has long been taken for granted collapses, we are compelled to confront a pressing question: Is "truth" merely an illusion forged by collective compromise? When the boundary between symbolic truth and simulation dissolves, how could we reconstruct what has been distorted, shattered, and concealed?

The exhibition does not aim to give answers. Instead, the artists create a deliberate perceptual "glitch", with the hope that the engagement and response of each viewer will generate further disruptions, perhaps even chaos. While we witness how the same scene shatters under divergent gazes, we also experinece how easily the "rational" and the "absurd" trade places.

Curated by Zoe Chang

Yuan Art Museum