An Auto-Ethnographic Research in See and Gain

Abstract

The research applied the methodologies of auto-ethnographical research and case study on artist Jiaqi Li’s solo exhibition at Studio Gallery in Shanghai, 2025. Three core characteristics distinguish this exhibition from traditional ones: a critical response to the digital media era, an artist-led collaboration model between the artist and the gallery, and multidimensional experiments conducted at exhibition openings and academic events. The exhibition drew on the theories of “simulacra”, “post-internet art”, and "trompe l’oeil", and responded to the gap between “images” and “reality”. At the same time, the study elaborates on the practical process of artist-led exhibition placement, as well as how to transform the exhibition from a static display to a dynamic, multi-sensory dialogue field through the introduction of psychological experiments and a series of lectures. See and Gain is not only a milestone for the artist himself, but also provides valuable reference cases for the contemporary art industry ecology.