Drug: Chronic Disease-Past exhibitions-拾萬空间

Drug: Chronic Disease

Beijing

12th July -6th September, 2025

Drug: Chronic Disease

Drug: Chronic Disease
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Artist: Sun Rui, Li Duo, Lv Fanhe

Exhibition: Drug

Duration: 12th July -6th September, 2025

Opening: 4 PM Saturday, 12th July, 2025

The surface is the depth. I forget who said it, but I remember the words, because one morning I suddenly realized—we are already living completely within this abyss of surfaces. Not even beneath their depth or form, but caught in their shifting. Breath, change, the next breath. This shifting brings us everything. It gives you the chance to become someone else, to not exist, and to exist in several eras at once. The transformation of form has grown out of this superficial void, forming a kind of dizzying inevitability. Dizzying, because that inevitability is rooted in every accident, in the elasticity of probability. My friend, you are bound to be here, because you already exist in every place.

Today, we have to go through this kind of “dizziness” again and again—letting ourselves be everywhere at once—just to keep a lifelong chronic condition going, to keep it from breaking down or changing. It’s so free, with no clear direction. Like playing cards: only when everyone has laid down their hand do you finally see what it really is.

At 4 PM on July 12, during the opening of the exhibition, Li Duo will present her performance piece A Half Step Away From Poetry. We warmly invite everyone to attend the show and share a drink with the artist—to complete this “half step” into poetry together.

Li Duo

A Half Step Away From Poetry

Performance video documentation, tattoo materials, erguotou, blood-stained clothing

Duration: 30 minutes

Before becoming an artist, I worked for four years as a professional tattooist—though I have no tattoos on my own body. The space includes two chairs and a table. On the wall behind me, I handwrite the phrases “It’s all in the liquor” and “Artist:”.

“It’s all in the liquor” comes from my upbringing in northeast China, where adults often gathered to drink—whether to express sorrow or bravado, this phrase was always close at hand. “Artist:” is a prompt for the audience; anyone who steps forward during the performance becomes part of the work and is invited to write their name beneath it. Once seated, I install the tattoo machine and begin tattooing myself using erguotou from the table instead of traditional ink. The phrase I tattoo is “A Half Step Away From Poetry.” During this process, audience members are welcome to sit across from me, to pause, to share a drink. If no one joins, I continue tattooing alone. When it’s finished, I put my jacket back on—blood seeps through the fabric, leaving a print. I leave; the jacket remains.

Normally, drinking is prohibited during tattooing as it can lead to inflammation, allergic reactions, scarring, and heightened pain. Traditional tattooing uses ink inserted into the skin. In this piece, I replace ink with alcohol, exposing the act as a raw wound. The alcohol quickens my blood flow, causing the tattoo site to bleed more rapidly. Everyone who drinks with me becomes part of my body for the night—becoming this very moment.

——Li Duo

ABOUT ARTIST

Sun Rui born in 1999 in Lanzhou, Gansu, received her MFA from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2025. She currently lives and works in Beijing. Sun Rui is deeply fascinated by the intricate social dynamics surrounding her. In her work, "human connections" intertwine with overlapping spaces, which become sites of incidents, while the entangled timelines evoke emotional enigmas. These incident sites and emotional mysteries shape a unique aesthetic: the illuminated spaces nearby, the forgotten corners of small towns, and the places of an unrealized future. Transforming these spaces into havens is at the heart of Sun Rui's artistic expression.

Li Duo born in 1998, Shenyang, Liaoning, China, graduated in 2024 from the China Academy of Art.. She is currently working in Hangzhou. She is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in on paper.She uses the body as a medium of intervention, treating it as a variable within fixed realities. By adjusting movements and relational dynamics, she generates new perceptual experiences. Her work explores the individual's position within the collective, focusing on play, interaction, and power structures. Through sustained actions, she leaves affective traces that reveal the hidden realities of human relationships, casting moments of disruption and reflection into the fabric of the everyday.

Lv Fanhe born in 1993 in Anshan, Liaoning, received her MFA in 2021 from the Chinese Painting Department at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently working in Shenyang. Lv Fanhe’s painting isn’t bound by the structures or logic of traditional ink painting. What drives her work is a sharp sensitivity to the everyday—scenes that pass quickly but leave an impression. She pays attention to the places her gaze wanders without permission, and she paints what she sees. A security guard holding a banana. A moment that feels both deadpan and intimate. The composition unfolds like a northern-style comic skit, or like when a close friend returns from an errand and excitedly tells you what strange, funny things they saw.

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