VENICE.- The exhibition Dream Stream at the China Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale opened on May 8. It is curated by the Art Museum of the China Academy of Art.

Dream Stream takes its name from Dream Stream Essays (Mengxi Bitan) by Shen Kuo, a scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty. Titled Dream Stream, the China Pavilion takes stream as its guiding metaphor and dream as its experiential horizon. In dialogue with the introspective tone of the Biennale’s overarching theme In Minor Keys, it unfolds a poetics of fluidity to articulate a conversation between Eastern philosophy and contemporary art.

The exhibition brings together calligraphy, installation, and technologies. Black Myth: Wukong makes its debut on an international art platform as a game art form. E-mythical Beasts, created by a team of young artists, presents a future landscape of mythical creatures reshaped by algorithms. E-Seed presents cutting-edge research findings published in Nature through the medium of video; physical seeds are embedded into the large-scale installation 2027 Shen Guo, by the the mega-project team of MSG. Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci issues a cross-temporal proposal to this Renaissance master, inviting the Northern Song dynasty scientist Shen Kuo to jointly decipher the dilemma of the technological age.

The spatial installation Liangzhu Highlight, co-created by artists Zheng Jing, Wu Junyong and their teams in collaboration with scientists from Zhejiang Lab, projects dynamic light from high above onto the ground. Artist Xu Jiang's outdoor sculpture Symbiosis projects the imagery of its sunflower-lotus symbiosis indoors through a camera obscura, creating an interface of light and shadow that implies infinite reflections and endless symbiosis; Kinetic Droplet Instrument (Di Dong Yi) employs a mechanical installation to simulate the natural phenomenon of a single water droplet creating ripples; Calligrapher Wang Dongling's giant cursive script Free and Easy Wandering joins together with a robot co-writing the characters Dream Stream; Micro-Nano Landscape originates from a sustained gaze at the kinetic state of micro-nano robots under a microscope;Yang Fudong's latest work Solitary Hill, Plantain Rain pays tribute to the reclusive traditions of the Song Dynasty through cross-media techniques.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini expressed his admiration for Chinese culture. President of La Biennale di Venezia Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, reviewed the artistic exchanges between China and Italy, from Marco Polo to the contemporary era. Curator Yu Xuhong hopes that the audience would feel the poetry and charm of Chinese culture, appreciate the creativity and vitality of contemporary Chinese art, and grasp the tension and warmth of art in the AI era.

Dream Stream is a stream that connects civilizations, flows with poetic grace, and reaches toward the future. In times of uncertainty, art draws strength for growth from the dialogue of civilizations, and seeks a light that cuts through darkness in obscure moments.