"Essential Variation" originates from Husserl's theoretical terminology. Its core principle is that by freely imagining and altering the elements and forms of certain things to generate a series of different variants, one can gradually strip away their secondary attributes through these imaginations, thereby identifying the persistent invariants—that is, the essence of things. In the process of artistic creation, we use various objects as "materials" and imagine the various forms they might take. Through exploration and experimentation, we alter the essence of the materials, transforming "raw materials" into information carriers and reconstructed objects that contain symbolic meanings and transcend physical forms, so as to convey personal perspectives. The objects used as "materials" are continuously altered in the artistic creation process, diluting their original functional purposes, blurring the boundaries of their inherent forms, and acquiring new interpretive meanings. "Once" ordinary objects are transformed in the artistic space into products of the creative subject's ideological expression in the artistic space, converted into media for 隐喻观点 (metaphorizing ideas), explaining phenomena, expressing emotions, and enhancing experiences. Through artistic reshaping, they become mirrors of social reality. The works exhibited in this Tinglan Art Museum are all independently created by 17 graduate students from the 2024 class of the Department of Experimental Art at Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. These works take the exploration of materials from everyday objects as their starting point, altering the essence of materials from multiple dimensions. The works incorporate various perspectives on philosophical speculation, ecological appeals, gender equality, cultural cognition, etc. The creators strive to broaden the scope of artistic materials and transform artistic visual rhetoric through their own practices. At the same time, they also make small efforts and contributions to promoting the iteration of aesthetic paradigms.

————Meng Xin Department of Experimental Art, Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts