Sixi Museum is pleased to announce our duo exhibition of emerging artists Qian Qian and Christian Quin Newell, entitled The Lignt Burns the Reality, which will run from August 12 to October 26, 2025.
With a curatorial lens that revisits Surrealism and the light it continues to cast on the contemporary, we are reminded of the words of Cecilia Alemani, the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, “Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else; a world set free, brimming with possibilities. But it is also the allegory of a century that imposed intolerable pressure on the very definition of the self...”
Today, we find ourselves once again confronting a profound rupture between the meaning of life and the systems of value that underpin it—alongside escalating tensions between the human subject and the natural world. In ancient China, there exists the tale of “burning a rhino horn to illuminate the abyss”: it was believed that setting a rhinoceros horn alight would reveal the strange, fantastical beings lurking in the depths of the water, offering an insight into the secret and manifold nature of reality. While modern science confirms that rhino horn is in fact non-flammable, this Eastern Jin-era allusion resonates uncannily with the Surrealism that would emerge over a millennium later in the West—both use the flame of imagination to tear through the veil of reality and glimpse an alternate logic of life and new dimensions of being.
As Salvador Dalí once declared: “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” Surrealism is not merely a romantic manifestation of the subconscious—it is a challenge to, and a reconstruction of, the established modes of perception. Through compositions and imagery that defy conventional logic, it points directly to obscure psychological truths.
This exhibition brings together two young artists—Qian Qian and Christian Quin Newell—whose practices, though distinct in style, both reflect surrealist sensibilities. Each artist responds in their own way to this era where imagination and reality are deeply entangled, opening a dual mirrored portal between emotion and reason for the viewer.
