PSA Emerging Curators Project 2025

The two selected proposals of ECP 2025 are “LiHi·Brave New Mind: Li Hanwei’s Sanatorium Project” (curated by Wu Zhe and Chen Wenyi) and “Wish You Were Here 2047: Is ‘chenchenchen’ a Fictional Artist?” (curated by Zhou Yi and Chen Gong). Both will be presented to the public as exhibitions on February 7, 2026.

LiHi·Brave New Mind: Li Hanwei’s Sanatorium Project

Curators: Wu Zhe, Chen Wenyi

About the Exhibition:

In an era where everything is optimized by technology, is recuperation also constrained by an ever-operating system? The exhibition “LiHi·Brave New Mind: Li Hanwei’s Sanatorium Project” originates from a fictional sanatorium brand, LiHi, inviting visitors to enter a meticulously designed experiential environment. “Brave New Mind,” the core motto of LiHi, points not to a specific organ but to a collective imagination of intelligence, rationality, and efficiency. Guided by this concept, the mind and perception are treated as renewable resources, while recuperation is understood as a long-term, continuous technical operation. Conceived within this framework, the exhibition is transformed into a spatial structure, in which the site is constructed as a circular, modular system. Videos, sculptures, paintings, lighting, and other forms of works are arranged within a unified structural and lighting system, acting as sensory nodes that interact with one another while remaining relatively independent. As viewers move through the exhibition, they are presented with a pre-configured “sanatorium package,” allowing them to sense variations in intensity and density across different units. Through the arrangement of space, perceptual paths, and modes of viewing, the artist explores how technology operates at the limits of the body and emotion, while addressing critical questions: whether art can still sustain its ambiguity when creation, spectatorship, and recuperation itself become configurable social labor? Whether there still exists a genuinely human dimension that cannot be fully absorbed by a highly optimized system?

Wish You Were Here 2047: Is “chenchenchen” a Fictional Artist?

Curators: Zhou Yi, Chen Gong

About the Exhibition:

“Always First.” Chen Chenchen, the legendary artist working at the intersection of commerce and technology, has established himself as one of the most internationally influential and representative Chinese artists of the past half-century. Over a career spanning more than forty years, he has remained at the forefront of contemporary art, pioneering a maximalist and systematic approach to creation that sustains long-term practice through multidimensional and rhizomatic modes of generation. The projects he has initiated consistently generate intense public and market attention, while the structural complexity, formal tension, and narrative energy of his work have forged a highly recognizable visual and conceptual framework within contemporary art. Centered around his art practice, Chen Chenchen was among the first of his generation to gradually construct a highly sophisticated art-commercial world: OXYZ3. Within this ever non-linear career, Chen Chenchen has taken on multiple roles: painter, performance artist, theater director, PhD in Philosophy, musician, pop icon, public figure, and entrepreneur. As an artist who serves as a crucial link between contemporary art and the public, he has inevitably become a figure of controversy, bearing the tensions and consequences generated by the friction between art and society. On the occasion of the artist’s 60th birthday, the exhibition “Wish You Were Here 2047” will be presented at the Power Station of Art. The exhibition brings together nearly 50 (sets of) works, spanning from his early paintings in 2006, created at the age 17, to his recent mature projects. Original artworks, manuscripts, photographs, videos, games, and related archival materials from both public institutions and private collections will be included, with several works being presented to the public for the first time. Organized into six thematic sections, the exhibition offers an intimate view into the artist’s living and working site.

PSA Emerging Curators Project 2025

Since its inception, the “Emerging Curators Project” has served as an annual exhibitory and academic trademark of the Power Station of Art, supporting 58 young Chinese curators through 23 on-site exhibitions and 2 online editions. For the first time, ECP 2025 shifts its focus to case studies and presentations of individual artists, inviting young curators to submit proposals for solo exhibitions. Through an in-depth examination of the artist’s creative practice, the project encourages curators to generate a more nuanced understanding of the artist’s individual modes of production and to develop exhibition narratives that are more issue-driven and context-responsive, fostering new reflections on the relationship between curating and exhibiting through close dialogue and collaboration between artists and curators.