How to Make Things Stand

Hol（洞）will present the exhibition "How to Make Things Stand" by artist Qiu Ja in May 2026. Centered on the seemingly simple yet fundamental question of "standing", the artist embarks on an ongoing exploration of the relationships between things, structures, the body and the site. Qiu Ja has long worked with materials marked by traces of use and the passage of time, including wood, plaster, old table tops, table legs and building beams. For him, these materials are not neutral media; they are things carrying their own history, weight and ethics. In his creative process, he does not seek to reshape them fully into predefined forms. Instead, through co-construction, negotiation and contingency, he allows things of disparate origins to enter new relational contexts, attaining a temporary balance and a renewed state of existence.

The exhibition title "How to Make Things Stand" refers both to the most basic physical challenge of sculpture, and more importantly, to the artist's underlying working methodology. In Qiu Ja's works, "standing" does not mean forming a stable, self-contained posture. Rather, it is to let multiple things support and constrain each other at a critical moment, where they together reach a provisionally stable state through the deliberate "misuse" of their original functions. Relations of support, modes of connection, material traces, and structural instability together form the core visual language of his work.

In this exhibition, an assemblage composed of rearranged table legs and building beams exemplifies the artist's creative approach. Table legs originally serve the everyday order of furniture, while building beams belong to the load-bearing structure of architecture. Freed from their original functions and reassembled together, these materials appear as if accidentally drawn into the same relational field. They retain familiar everyday proportions, yet transform into unfamiliar, tense spatial installations. Viewers sense a structural familiarity that feels recognizable, while being unable to reduce the works to their original practical purposes.

This coexistence of the familiar and the uncanny places the works between failed utility and emerging form.

"How to Make Things Stand" is not an answer to a technical problem, but a renewed inquiry into the way things exist. When a thing is stripped of its original function, when its supporting structure is laid bare, its utility removed, overlooked or marginalized - can it still stand on its own in a new form? Within this state of uncertainty and openness, Qiu Ja's works continuously explore the perception of things, the sedimentation of time, and the interplay of spatial relationships.