We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree¡­
-Little Gidding, No.4 of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

This generation of young Chinese has no experience of the hardship of life. Emotionally they are self-centered and mentally immature, they feel empty inside, floating above the ground, cannot get hold of the rapidly-changing reality. Unlike their early counterparts in the 1960s-70s, their past loses connection with China's political or social life; private memory to them is the only roots that they can refer themselves to. Every present moments for them is like broken wings pursuing the shadows of the past, though, in vain.

Amelie Gallery's Memory or Reality Contemporary Art Exhibition focuses on Chinese young artists' nostalgic sentiments. In reluctance confronting the inexorability of existence, they try to retreat to the past by art, feeding their canvas with abandoned toys, knocked-down old time cinema buildings, demolished HuTong streets where childhood playmates' Red Army role-play games are still vivid¡­To them, memory seems to be alive, substantiates their individuality; It interlaces with existence, trapping these sensitive souls in the adjacencies between the real and the illusional.

Participating artists is a group of ambitious young elitists who came out from China's top fine art academies, including Meng HuoJun, Liu XiaFei, Li Liang, Huang Kai (who is popular with his HuTong Series woodcuts in comic book style), Xu HongXiang, Zhao Bo, Wang ZhiXin and Wang YanHu. Medium embraces oil on canvas and woodcut etc.

Speed across the Sky, 2008
Oil on Canvas, 140x140cm,
By Wang ZhiXin

GreenWater, 2008
Oil on Canvas, 120x150cm
By Li Liang

Rabbit Toy, 2008
Oil on Canvas, 150x150cm,
By Zhao Bo