We are pleased to announce that the artist Cheng Tingting’s solo exhibition “Frankincense” will be presented from August 29th to September 29th, 2020.

In the 11th century AD, with the establishment of the “Maritime Silk Road” (also known as the “Maritime Frankincense Road”), Oman exported dozens to hundreds of tons of frankincense to China every year. In the early Northern Song Dynasty, Quanzhou Chen Hongjin sent an envoy in December of the first year of Qiande (963), “giving thousands of taels of gold, ten thousand teals of frankincense, tea, and medicine for tribute.” This “useless thing” juxtaposed with gold and silver induced her fantasies and myths about power, lust, and religion, and was taken as the beginning of the creation of the new exhibition.

Cutting from the bark of the Boswellia, and then the milky juice flows out from the wound and hardens when exposed to air. People choose the yellowish with little reddish translucent clot and full and pure color, and finally, condense it into frankincense. Since the third and fourth centuries AD, the method of production has never changed. This kind of plant-produced fragrance resin has gone through a long journey of region and civilization, spreading from Eastern and Western religious occasions to various industries in the post-industrial era, and is refined into essential oils and beverages for human use. Cheng Tingting pays attention to the subtle changes in the spread of this spice source and absorbs its essence along with the process of purification, combining it with the idea of sculpture entangled with contemporary aesthetics, taking the purity and reality of the “shaping” methods. Through the complex sculpture structure, she awakens the viewer’s re-perception of form.