"mixed feelings"

A dream is not necessarily assigned one body
Cedar Sigo

Cibrián is pleased to present “mixed feelings”, the first solo exhibition by Ruoxi Jin (Harbin, China, 1997) at the gallery.

The exhibition opens with a five-column spreadsheet-like table. These are Beck’s Columns, developed by the psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. It is a structured exercise used to identify and reorganize negative automatic thoughts by separating situations, emotions, and responses into distinct categories. The artist adopts this introspective framework, exposing her own thought process and involving both the gallerist and the exhibition-making process. Marked by a disarming honesty, the work confronts the viewer at the threshold of the exhibition space. It functions as a passage into a sensory world less governed by destructive affects. Or so we may hope. It is an exploration of the boundaries between psychological self-analysis and institutional critique.

A group of people singing “Happy Birthday” in French and Euskera across a range of emotional registers resonates throughout the space. The sound originates in the gallery’s storage room and is channeled into the space through an opening left by the previous exhibition. The person to whom the song is addressed remains unknown. These voices, more or less in tune, seem to settle onto the objects in the exhibition. Among them, a multitude of opera glasses are displayed on the floor, facing the ceiling. They have been transformed by the artist. As with the song, it remains unclear where these glasses are directed. Yet they seem to inhabit the entire space. Each pair of glasses has been filled with a fake flower. What is supposed to be a tool of vision becomes the vessel of a precarious occupation. This gesture of obstructing sight is less an act of denial than one of transformation. It does not alter the object’s form, but reshapes its presence. This shift is central to Ruoxi Jin’s work.

Two prescription sheets are part of “mixed Feelings”. These medical prescriptions are legal orders written by Nassim Sarni, a psychiatrist and artist, as well as a close friend and collaborator of Ruoxi Jin. One prescription is addressed to the gallerist, the other to the artist.
Until I meet my father again is addressed to the gallerist, who is asked to choose a deadline marking the end of the consignment period for the works displayed in the exhibition — the title is the gallerist’s response. Metal to metal, plastic to plastic, glass to glass, paper to paper, is addressed to the artist, who is asked to decide the becoming of the works after the deadline. Ruoxi Jin will ultimately recycle the materials that compose these objects.
Here, Jin poetically highlights the circulation of artworks. She reveals the invisible mechanisms through which dialogue and the relationship between artist and gallerist play a central role. They rely upon one another.
Through this work, the viewer also begins to grasp the provenance of the objects used by the artist: they once belonged to the gallerist’s father.

A wide range of elements converge in “mixed feelings”. Objects from different origins, songs, and conceptual instructions inform one another, reflecting a vision open to intersection and association. One of the forces holding these elements together is absence—a tour de force. Ruoxi Jin engages with missing information and absent voices, creating an echo across past, present, and emerging realities.