'Things are neither present nor absent, real or unreal, but flickering ralationality of trans/matter.'
— Karen Barad

‘Frantumaglia’ is a disused Italian word meaning ‘a collection of fragments’, also used to talk about indescribable feelings. It’s the title of a recent book by Elena Ferrante, the famous Italian pseudonym writer. The book is a memoir, an autobiography joining reality and fiction, placing and playing the reader between dream and matter. A similar attitude is found in Li Li Ren’s exhibition: an impalpable premise shaping up the experience in the gallery, which becomes a place where the real and the imagined merge for the duration of the show.

The exhibition unfolds on both floors of the gallery, with sculptural elements in glass, resin, marble, bronze, memory foam and water. The pieces inhabiting the spaces are interior， everyday objects we are well used to: a mattress, a chair, car bits, some swim fins, and even some hands evoking gestures and basic emotions. However, in their present state, these elements appear more like familiar ghosts, or traces embodying a mirage-like narrative, a distant idea of being.

Entering Frantumaglia catches by surprise. Walking into what might look like the aftermath of some traumatic event, witnessed by the elements of broken objects sparse around the gallery, we are left to wonder on the state of disorder as a feminist intervention. As a matter of fact, it’s in the patriarchal, capitalist world, all about real estate building and propulsive making, in the era of ‘just do it’, that destruction, un-building, un-worlding are the only alternative, the only solutions. In the exhibition, turning destruction and collapse into an aesthetic, we are forced to think about the inevitability of change and decay: our own bodies collapse and we cannot escape that. With this awareness we move around the space, experiencing a rupture of time, entering a mental state of displacement by which we suddenly and intimately realise that time is diluted, diffused.

In Frantumaglia, past, present and future merge, and time, like water, flows across and connects us. Parallelly we notice that the materiality of the pieces is crucial to this experience: it’s itself in constant flux, in continuous action. Static objects but alive and mutating— from permanent to contingent, from soft and ethereal to hard and heavy. Sculptural materials constantly alternate and shift, manifesting their transformative powers. In the new materialist tradition, we start perceiving that it’s in the relationships between the objects that the exhibition takes its form. Difficult to grasp but present everywhere, meaning is created in the interdependencies of the objects and entities populating the gallery.

As we proceed through space, the works are choreographed in order to activate an osmotic narrative which navigates feelings of intensity, fear, shock, followed by recovery, healing, intimacy and rebirth at last. And while we find and witness signs of the irreparable and forming, water in fact becomes an essential element— a vessel for life and hope, a place holder to imagine, from the intensity of a stretched present moment, a new future.

http://www.qimuspace.com/men

事物既不存于当下也并非缺席不在场。 既不是真实也非不真实， 更似超越物质的一种忽隐忽现的关系
————凯伦. 芭拉德
任莉莉的个展“ Frantumaglia | 在此地与彼时之间” ，将于2021年11月19日在北京七木空间开幕。
Frantumaglia | 在此地与彼时之间
“Frantumaglia "是一个不再被使用的意大利词语，意为 “碎片的集合”，来谈论不可描述的感受。意大利作家埃莱娜-费兰特的自传回忆录，以此
为名，这本书，游离于梦境与实物之间，连接现实与虚构。任莉莉的展览，也同样融合了真实与想象，将观者置于一种暧昧的假设中。
展览贯穿整个空间的上下层，用到了记忆棉、大理石、树脂、玻璃、青铜以及水等雕塑元素。作品的形态看似日常如椅子、弹簧床网、汽车挡
风玻璃、潜水脚蹼等，却同时像是某种熟悉的幽灵，或海市蜃楼般的遥远召唤。
“Frantumaglia|在此地与彼时之间”，呈现出一种创伤性的事后现场。散落的破碎物见证的无序状态，引人思考。这是由建造驱动的时代，房地 产和制造业，“Just do it ”是父权制的资本主义的精神。展览呈现出的一种毁坏与瓦解的美感，世界在建造，而我们自身的空间却与此同时，不可
幸免地与周遭一起破碎、瓦解和衰败。
过去、现在与未来融合，时间如水一般，流过并连接着我们。我们在空间中移动，体验时间的断裂。我们的精神在此地与彼时之间，亲密地游 走，感受时间被稀释和扩散。静物，处于不断的变化与持续的行动中，在柔软空灵与坚硬沉重之间流转，辗转于永久性和偶然性之间，被赋予
生命力。雕塑材料交替与变形，呈现出其转化的力量，犹如时间赋予人的体验。
物质性与形式之间相互依存、忽隐忽现，我们需要在空间关系中，感受作品的表现力。它们被编排，彼此激活，渗透，叙述。当我们在空间中 前进，在激烈、不安中穿梭，会经历亲密、创伤、恢复、愈合、以及重生。转化的力量是水，作为生命最重要的元素，水是希望的容器，连接
紧张的当下与对未来的想象。