苏州｜虹·美术馆群展：见微，知著。

Yet I never opened that software to input instructions for this exhibition essay. After hesitating again and again, I decided to disconnect from the internet and write this article. Perhaps this is not advanced—maybe even a bit outdated. But what convinced the little voice in my head that wanted to use AI was this: every work by the artists in this exhibition required hands-on effort, taking anywhere from half a month to one or two months to complete. How could I justify using a five-minute-edited, 200-word prompt to output a seemingly readable thousand-word article, then spend forty minutes polishing it into “human language” before presenting it to the public?

Standing in solidarity with the artists—today, this may not even qualify as an attitude, but rather a baseline principle. In the future, AI-generated texts may inevitably surpass human writing in every way. But for now, I choose to disconnect, to hold fast to that baseline.

This exhibition originated in the autumn of last year, when a certain sentiment prevailed online: as the economy slows, consumers would face the dilemma of being unable to buy good service even if they are willing to pay. A simple example: in the name of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, a certain hotel reduced its cleaning staff from 15 to 8. The room rate remains the same, but the quality of cleaning is bound to drop…

This led me to reflect: if this assertion holds true, in the future we will inevitably be forced to consume “coarse grains,” while “fine grains” will become increasingly rare. Recall, for instance, the frustration of dealing with certain construction workers during renovation—no matter how good your taste or how high your budget, in the end, you are often left stunned by the shoddy work and careless attitude.

Thus, I decided to curate an exhibition about “fine grains.” And so, “Minutiae sed Magna” came into being. My team and I spent nearly eight months compiling a list of 160 artists born after 1980, with selection criteria including figurative painting, a unique stylistic language, and meticulous detail… Then, over four months of outreach and communication, we finally confirmed 47 participating artists.

“Details determine success or failure”—this well-known adage served as a crucial standard for this exhibition. Each work measures no more than 60cm in length or width, striving to reveal vast worlds within minute dimensions and profound meaning in subtle details.

The exhibition title “Minutiae sed Magna” also reflects our team’s hope: that beyond appreciating the paintings, the audience can truly perceive the distinctive brilliance of each of the 47 sincerely selected artists. This is the ultimate goal of the exhibition.

The exhibition is divided into four sections: “Time and Energy,” “Measure and Scale,” “Sensibility and Vibration,” and “Detail and Seduction.” Each highlights the most direct impact and experience that finely crafted, exquisite, and supreme paintings bring to the viewer’s senses—physically, mentally, and emotionally. From Huang Quan, Li Gonglin, and Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione) in the East to Dürer, Chardin, and Courbet in the West, countless dazzling masters obsessed with details have emerged throughout the history of art over millennia.

In their time, they conquered courts and the powerful with their detail and finesse; today, a new generation of highly skilled artists continues to ensure that time is not wasted. When details are sufficiently expansive and time invested continues to increase, painting transforms from a two-dimensional visual experience into an interplay between the retina, the brain, and the body. In this process, rational cognition and emotional surges constantly wrestle, each winning and losing in turn.

However, following the trajectory of art history or certain empirical observations, in twenty or even just three to five years, some of the 47 participating artists may transition. They might abandon the skills that once made them and others proud, no longer investing time and effort in detailed depiction, and move toward the opposite extreme: like an ancient individual in what is now Tai’an, Shandong, who, one day no less than 5,000 years ago, whether for ritual or daily use, hand-molded and painted a ceramic stem bowl (dou). In 1978, archaeologists unexpectedly unearthed this object, dating it to the Neolithic Dawenkou culture period, and named it the Painted Pottery Dou with Octagonal Star Pattern. Today, it is one of 195 cultural relics in China permanently prohibited from being exhibited abroad.

Setting aside its historical and cultural value, the labor of a worker without professional training or advanced skills managed to traverse millennia, conquering millions of people today with its simplicity and naive charm. This can only be called a miracle. What is the highest form of art? This is the ultimate ideal that every art practitioner should carry.

And on the path to miracles, besides talent, one must inevitably rely on skill and time. Right now, these artists are walking this path, step by step.

Qi Chao
September 16, 2025, Hong Kong