Massinissa Selmani’s show, distances, at Aranya Art Centre North marks the artist’s inaugural solo presentation in China and forms part of a quartet of new exhibitions synchronised with the broader rhythms of the Gallery Weekend Beijing programme. Selmani’s distinctive surrealist vernacular finds a resonant echo in the singular atmosphere of the Aranya Art Centre (AAC) – an architectural and cultural landmark situated within the contemplative area of Aranya, an enclaved coastal resort in Beidaihe. Once a destination for the élite in the 1980s and, prior to that, a coastal retreat fashioned by foreign merchants and diplomats in the late nineteenth century, the site bears sedimented histories that accumulate in a parallel manner across time.
Beidaihe’s layered chronotope – a simultaneity of historical moments rather than linear archaeological strata – generates a poignant backdrop for Selmani’s oblique, poetic enquiries. The locale is less a singular destination than an overlapping constellation of temporalities. The colonial villa compound, the leisure site popularised by retirees and the contemporary curated community all interweave to form a quasi-utopian society. In this gently estranged space, Selmani exhibits eight works, two of which were commissioned specifically by AAC and all of which coalesce around his ongoing exploration of the ‘leave blank’ aesthetic – a conceptual approach that chimes with the Chinese artistic tradition of liubai.
In traditional Chinese ink painting, liubai – the act of deliberately leaving voids or absences – is a gesture that invites the unsaid to speak, the invisible to articulate. Although Selmani’s drawings may not consciously cite this reference, the expansive negative spaces within his compositions activate a similar kind of cognitive resonance. Charged with potentiality, these lacunae allow viewers to complete, project or misrecognise in a process as much about the interior as the external world.
