BEIJING.- Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum announces three new exhibitions for its summer programme, each examining experimental creative practices at the margins through urgent, historical, meta-reflexive lenses: the free world constructed by Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu; life rehearsals for atypical individuals; and curatorial methods that transmute economic constrains into economical techniques. These practices present how limitations can be reimagined and transformed into distinctive attributes and particularity, challenging conventional boundaries between normality and abnormality, freedom and containment, rudimentary and efficiency, thus opening innovative pathways for artistic engagements with today’s world.

Life Rehearsals
June 14–October 19, 2025

Artistic directors: Li Mu, Carol Yinghua Lu
Curator: Na Rongkun
Artists: Bethel House, Brittany Thorpe, Daisuke Kosugi, David Bernstein, Desmond Mah, Fu Boren, HASS Lab, He Ziyu, Isaac Chong Wai, Kang Jing, Project YYIN, Shanzhai MFA, Sijben Rosa, Wataru Koyama, Zhao Jianze

Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum has long supported the artistic practice of the autism community. Through its “Autistic or Artistic” series, the museum has showcased paintings by autistic children, facilitated artist interventions, offered public consultations, and hosted academic events. Expanding on this trajectory, the exhibition Life Rehearsals traces the cognitive history of autism diagnosis and care in the 20th century while exploring evolving representations of autism in global cinema and media. It presents commissioned works by neurodivergent artists, alongside responsive artworks from artists and art groups across China, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and elsewhere. These works engage with the daily challenges of individuals with mental disabilities and the psychological states of caregivers. Focusing on the core symptom of autism spectrum disorder—difficulties in social interactions—the exhibition offers a reflective examination of the shifting concepts of “normality” and “abnormality”, and how social norms construct self-discipline, seeking to reaffirm the confidence in the dignity of diverse modes of existence.

Beauty Is Here: The Free World of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu
June 14–September 21, 2025

Curator: Carol Yinghua Lu
Artists: Zhao Wenliang, Yang Yushu

On July 14, 1979, the first public exhibition of No Name Group opened at Huafangzhai in Beihai Park, Beijing, marking a pivotal moment in the history of Chinese contemporary art. Renowned artist Liu Haisu inscribed “Mei Zai Si (Beauty Is Here),” affirming the group’s artistic pursuit and celebrating their independence in spirit. This exhibition departs from this inscription, and focuses on the paintings of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, founding members of No Name Group, from 1970 to 1982. During this period, they insisted on expressing their own true feelings in art while being under challenging circumstances, which demonstrates their consciousness to search for a free world through art. This is the eighth research exhibition hosted by Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu Art Centre of Beijing Insie-Out Art Foundation.

A Technique of Occupying Space: Seewon Hyun’s Floor Plan Cabinet
June 22–October 19, 2025 2025.6.22-10.19

Curator: Dain Oh
Artist: Seewon Hyun

This exhibition focuses on the practice of curator-writer Seewon Hyun, co-founder of Seoul’s Audio Visual Pavilion (AVP), which she now solely directs as AVP Lab. Taking Hyun’s 2017 project Floor Plan Cabinet as a case study, this exhibition presents her ongoing exploration of the floor plan as an independent curatorial form. Hyun views the floor plan as a diagrammatic tool to examine the spatiotemporal framework of an exhibition, as well as a technique of “occupying space” within resource constraints. This strategy emphasizes efficiency and compression, bridges art and design. This exhibition includes new commissioned works, floor plans, publications, tabulations, and archival materials. Hyun’s exploration embodies “economical” conceptualism, where financial and spatial limitations are addressed by the integration of design and art, contributing a distinctive aesthetic to Korean art scene.