Chill / Chapter I

I have always believed that Chill is a form of cross-disciplinary collective creation. It is not merely a self-initiated project within an art magazine; to be more precise, it is a shared effort realized under the common vision, resonance, and structure between the art magazine and contemporary artists. It is through this shared ground that we have been able to write “a page of history each month.”

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The mini-cover of Cans Contemporary Art News has, since May 2008, featured the rising momentum of China’s new generation of artists under the column “7080.” Later, it was rebranded as New ART, introducing promising young artists to the Chinese-speaking art world. After 13 years, borrowing a line from 1990s-born rapper Jony J’s song Like New, Like Old—“I find something new that’s old every day, and something old that feels new”—we came to realize that the word “NEW” alone could no longer encapsulate a world changing by the second. As discoverers of trend-driven values, we turned to the most commonly uttered word of our era—Chill—as the new title of the mini-cover. Its inaugural issue was released in December 2021.

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In the design concept of the cover, we deliberately moved away from artwork-focused imagery and instead featured the artists themselves. As social media continues to rise, we’ve noticed that self-promotion by artists has far outpaced the channels of the times. This form of person-and-practice co-branding has fundamentally subverted the traditional notion of the artist hiding behind the work. Thus, we made a strong push for contemporary artists to appear on camera, setting a new direction for the art industry. This not only satisfies the audience’s desire to see the faces behind the works, but also allows readers to deeply engage with the artists’ personal creative declarations through the content.

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The original meaning of Chill in English includes: coldness, to cool down. It functions as an adjective, a noun, and a verb. Through our observation of an increasingly heterogeneous environment, we’ve chosen Chill to describe a timeless human inclination for ease—a relaxed but not careless lifestyle, a sensibility that combines fashion, culture, and personal expression. Naturally, Chill permeates the creative and lived experiences of contemporary art. I particularly appreciate how this word implies a bold attitude—being unapologetically oneself, and caring little for others’ judgment.

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Organizing the "Chill" special exhibition has long been a cherished aspiration. Launching Chill / chapter Ⅰ at the end of 2024, we hope to establish this exhibition alongside the annual CANS Future Rising Stars as both a tradition and a shared expectation—an annual commitment that also offers a reflective lens into contemporary art. As this exhibition is intended to become a regular curatorial program, this first edition experiments with the visual interplay between weight and lightness as a way to evoke inner emotional shifts, ultimately proposing that when time becomes an attitude, art becomes a way of life. In this process, artistic creation is revealed as a form of personal conviction and living philosophy—one that resonates deeply with the core spirit of Chill.

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"Chill / chapter Ⅰ" presents twelve artists whose work offers a spectrum of introspective and expressive states: Su Huang-Seung’s sense of detachment, Lu Chih-Kai’s persistent insight, 

Hsu Ting’s reserved coolness, Hung Zhen-You’s brooding depth, Hung Yu-Hsi’s gentle warmth, Chang Hua’s gaze into the past, Lin Yi-Hsuan’s visual reflection, Tsai Yu-Chen’s spatial mending of time, Xu Maomao’s subtle melancholy, Chang Tse-Hsuan’s contemplative clarity, Crystal Lupa’s dream incubation, and Hua Ji-Lin’s literary sensibility. In their hands, art becomes a sincere act of self-practice. Through working with each of them, I have come to perceive ever more nuanced ways of seeing the world.

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Text By Curator / Cheng Nai-Ming