There are certain ways to identify that a nation is on crisis: people get hurt, economies crash, and everyone's in panic. Look around and see all these happen in every corner of the world but there seems to be no particular affirmation of the true crisis that affects all nations. In the exhibition Fineness, Xu Qu takes a quick turn from the topographical landscapes to currencies. The artist zooms into the designs of the Hong Kong dollar, RMB, US dollars, and Euros. The approach is done in a "minimal, non-figurative, dematerialized, and globalized" way that allows for people to be hit with the idea that we are in crisis. "The world moves at an extremely fast speed and its effect has incredible influences on everyone," the artist shares. " Nodes of the painting inevitably interact with massive social change, such as Impressionism arising from circumstances of the 19th Century Industrial Revolution, the global movement of Minimalism, etc, the world has come to a juncture again.”
