The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea @ Baltimore Museum of Art

The Way of Nature

Art from Japan, China, and Korea

Baltimore Museum of Art

September 21, 2025 - March 8, 2026

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) presents The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea, which draws on the museum’s extensive holdings to consider the importance of nature in East Asian cultures. The exhibition features more than 40 objects, from magnificent ink drawings to beautifully crafted stoneware and poignant contemporary photographs and prints. Collectively, the works reflect on nature as a vital source of creative inspiration and spiritual connection and consider human existence within the complexity of the vast natural world across centuries and into the present day. The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative, which explores the relationships between art and the environment.

“The Way of Nature offers an insightful look at the intertwining roots of artistic expression and the experience of the natural world through vibrant works from the BMA’s Asian art collection. It’s an exciting opportunity to see objects on view for the first time, or in a long time, through a lens that is both accessible and meaningful, as many of us seek connection through and to nature,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “As the BMA focuses on expanding its collection with the work of artists from around the globe, we are excited to continue to share more of our holdings, and the stories they contain, with our community.”

The Way of Nature is organized around four overarching themes that engage with elemental aspects of the natural world and human intervention within it. The exhibition opens with a section that examines depictions, interpretations, and connections to the qualities of air, water, and stone. Among the highlights is a handmade Fireman's Coat (hikeshi banten) with Hawk and Waves (Japan, early- to mid-20th century) by an unidentified artist. The intricately sewn object depicts a hawk soaring above turbulent waves, suggesting that the firefighter who chose the design sought the protective powers of water, strength, and keen vision. During a fire, the beautiful imagery would have been worn on the interior, only to be revealed once the fire was extinguished. The section also includes works such as the evocative ink drawing Water and Mountain Landscape (China, 1955) by the artist Huang Junbi and the densely decorated wood and jade sculpture Miniature Mountain with Longevity Motifs (China, late 18th - early 19th century) by an unidentified artist. 

The second section explores the significance of the changing seasons as visual indicators of nature’s transformative power, whether in the experience of wild terrain or in meticulously tended gardens. Across East Asia, emblems of the seasons, such as plums for the spring and chrysanthemums for the fall, are both often shared within communities and widely referenced in art. A case in this section includes a range of objects featuring plum blossoms, such as the hanging scroll Plum Branch and Full Moon (Japan, 1905-1915) by Kamisaka Sekka and the stoneware Bowl Decorated with Plum Branch and Crescent Moon (China, 13th century) by an unidentified artist. The section also includes a stunning Buddhist Priest's Robe (Kesa) in Karaori with Floral Designs (Japan, 1750-1868) by an unidentified artist.

The Way of Nature continues with works that capture human intrusion into the natural realm, as artists reveal humanity’s environmental impact through both imagery of calamitous events and in more subtle and ambiguous scenes. In his series Between Mountains and Water (2014–2017), Chinese artist Zhang Kechun examined the effects of human activities on the landscape in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, while Japanese artist Leiko Shiga documented the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the poignant photo series Rasen Kaigan. The exhibition concludes with consideration of the spiritual transcendence that can be found in nature. This final section is anchored by the eight-panel screen Ten Symbols of Long Life (Korea, mid- to late 19th century) by an unidentified artist. The complex screen incorporates eight separate paintings to convey a wish for longevity, as embodied through such symbols as cranes, bamboo, water, and sun.

The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is curated by Frances Klapthor, BMA Associate Curator of Asian Art.

BMA - BALTIMORE ART MUSEUM 

10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

artbma.org

Li Hei Di @ Pace Gallery, Hong Kong - "Tongues of Flare" Exhibition

Li Hei Di: Tongues of Flare

Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

May 29 – August 29, 2025

LI HEI DI 

Gapes at the vanity of toil, 2025

© Li Hei Di, courtesy Pace Gallery 

Pace presents Tongues of Flare, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by LI HEI DI, at its Hong Kong gallery. This presentation marks Li’s first solo show with Pace since they joined the gallery’s program in 2024. Following its run at Pace in Hong Kong, Tongues of Flare will travel to the Pond Society during Shanghai Art Week in the fall.

Born in Shenyang, China in 1997, Li, who currently lives and works in London, is known for their explorations of human embodiment, displacement, and intimacy in luminous paintings that blend abstraction and figuration. In their vibrant, dreamlike canvases—where ghostly, translucent bodies and body parts pulsate in and out of view amid abstract forms and washes of color—Li embeds latent narratives about gender, repressed and fulfilled desire, and emotional fluidity for viewers to uncover and decipher. Primarily a painter, they also work across sculpture and performance, mediums that complement their otherworldly canvases.

Li’s work has figured in recent group exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield in the United Kingdom, The Warehouse in Dallas, Le Consortium in Dijon, France, the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, and Marquez Art Projects in Miami, as well as the 2023 X Museum Triennial in Beijing. They are represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the High Museum in Atlanta; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio; the Hepworth Wakefield; the Long Museum in Shanghai; and the Yageo Foundation in Taiwan.

The artist’s exhibition at Pace in Hong Kong spotlights 11 new, never-before-exhibited paintings produced in 2025. Meditating on self-discovery and enactments of physical and spiritual transformation, these works imagine the body as an architecture of energies and feelings—a space where chaos, love, passion, and other phenomena converge and collide. These layered compositions, where spectral figures reveal and obscure themselves at different moments, speak to the complexities of selfhood and the conflicts between our internal selves and forces of the external world.

In this group of paintings, the most vulnerable and diaristic works that Li has created to date, the artist continues to use the natural world—in particular, movements and flows of water—as a metaphor for the evolutionary process of becoming one’s self. Wild abstractions rendered in saturated colors oscillate and undulate across their canvases with an oceanic rhythm, fluctuating with each motion of Li’s brush. As with their past bodies of work, they have also drawn inspiration from various literary sources—including Georges Bataille’s Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, and Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby—for their latest paintings. In these books—particularly in The Vegetarian, which tells the story of a woman who becomes increasingly convinced that she is turning into a plant—Li has uncovered new ideas about sexuality, monstrosity, and transfiguration that manifest in their new works. Each painting in this series can be understood as a seed for profound, liberating growth, revealing how change can emerge from the most hidden corners of the self.

A new wood sculpture by the artist is also on view in the exhibition. Depicting an abstracted body at repose within a cradle-like vessel, this work reflects the state of the physical body and the mind at night during sleep—sinking ever deeper into the shifting, unpredictable world of the unconscious. Presented together in Hong Kong, Li’s paintings and sculpture transport viewers to a realm where the boundaries between life and death, beauty and struggle, and imagination and reality are collapsed.

LI HEI DI (b. 1997, Shenyang, China) lives and works in London. The artist attended a one-year student exchange program in Ohio before studying at Idyllwild Arts in southern California. They received a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2020, and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2022. Their first one-artist exhibition was held at Linseed Projects, Shanghai (2022), followed by Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2023) and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2024). Recent group exhibitions including their work have been held at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong (2023); Centre of International Contemporary Art, Vancouver (2023); X Museum Triennial, Beijing (2023); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2024); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2024); GRIMM, New York (2024); and The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom (2025–2026). Their work is held in numerous public collections worldwide, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Long Museum, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of

Art; and Yageo Foundation, Taipei, among others.

PACE HONG KONG

12/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

www.pacegallery.com

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie @ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Exhibition Overview

Monstrous Beauty 

A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

March 25 – August 17, 2025

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a major exhibition, Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie, which radically reimagine the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s pervasive fantasies of both the East and the exotic along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition interrogates the ways in which this mutable, fragile material that shaped European women’s identities in the past also led to the construction of abiding racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy removed from the present, Monstrous Beauty casts a critical glance at inherited attitudes toward the style, exploring how negative stereotypes can be reclaimed as terms of female empowerment.

“Monstrous Beauty examines the multifaceted legacy of chinoiserie in 18th-century Europe,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By illuminating the beauty of the object and the power of this art form to reflect, distort, and dictate the ways in which women's identities have been shaped and perceived across time, this thought-provoking exhibition invites viewers to engage with the past in new ways."

Iris Moon, Associate Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met, said, “Monstrous Beauty is both a story of enchantment and a necessary unraveling of harmful myths from the past—myths about the exotic—that have a hold over the present. It is time to retell the history of chinoiserie.”

Bringing together nearly 200 historical and contemporary works, from 16th-century European works to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian American women artists, Monstrous Beauty illuminates how chinoiserie ornament actively constructed cross-cultural ideas of female desire and agency. Much sought after as the embodiment of Europe’s fantasy of the East in the 1700s, porcelain accumulated a variety of associations over the course of its complex history. Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken, it became a charged metaphor for women.

Contemporary works by Asian and Asian American women artists counteract chinoiserie’s stereotypes of exoticism by reclaiming the monstrous as a source of artistic possibility. The exhibition’s central atrium draws viewers in with an installation of Yeesookyung’s porcelain vessels, which feature broken shards mended and turned into dazzling monsters using the kintsugi repair method. Viewers themselves form an active part of the exhibition, joining the conversation between works from the past and pieces by contemporary artists, including a new commissioned work by Patty Chang. Abyssal is a full-size massage table made of raw, unglazed porcelain punctured by holes. After the exhibition closes, the table will be sunk in the Pacific Ocean. Instead of a sturdy horizontal support for a passive body, Patty Chang’s massage table is reimagined as an uncanny object with orifices. Patty Chang writes, “The holes put the body in doubt.” Raising questions about who or what we choose to see, the work recalls the unseen labor of Asian women spa workers, such as the six women killed during the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. Abyssal is also about the possibility of afterlives, regeneration, and transformation. Underwater, the table will serve as a deposit for growing coral.

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie: Exhibition Overview

Through a lens of curiosity and critique, porcelain reemerges here as a politically charged material that changed women’s lives. Five thematic sections introduce a mix of unexpected protagonists into the story of porcelain: queens, mothers, monsters, starlets, shoppers, and cyborgs. The style’s inventive language gave voice to novel tastes and identities, but also created lasting stereotypes that are difficult to break. The works of contemporary Asian and Asian American women artists are strategically positioned throughout the five thematic sections to rupture the illusion of a seamless continuity between past and present.

The exhibition begins with porcelain’s arrival in Europe via maritime trade. Porcelain appeared as strange and marvelous, when blue-and-white plates from Asia began arriving by sea in the 16th century. Merchants used porcelain from China as ballast, its weight offering ships stability in rough seas, before realizing they could sell it to eager consumers. Soon, shiploads of porcelain were being auctioned off in Europe by the late 1600s, even as anxieties around shipwrecks, warfare, and colonial violence surfaced obliquely in monstrous decorative motifs.

The next section explores how Mary II, Queen of England, developed an obsession with Asian ceramics in the late 1600s, giving birth to a taste for chinoiserie that influenced generations of women collectors in Europe. Mary’s main role as queen of England was to birth an heir. Instead, she gave birth to a taste for porcelain, which functioned as a surrogate body, a way to reproduce her presence by filling residences with bright ceramics, textiles, and lacquer panels. This feminine, personal take on chinoiserie contrasted with the French monarchy’s uses of the exotic to assert absolutist power.

Tea became ingrained in European culture, and the following section explores how this exotic beverage was turned into a potent symbol of civility that set Europe apart from the “savage” territories it exploited as well as the women who were in charge of cultivating a world of politeness in the home. Porcelain objects gained strong associations with women at a moment when public debates aired collective anxieties around their growing voices as consumers, tastemakers, and citizens.

Through the porcelain figurines that proliferated in 18th-century Europe, porcelain shaped notions of womanhood in unexpected ways. A shifting cast of goddesses, mothers, monsters, and performers, often clothed in gaudy costumes and adopting exaggerated poses, appeared. A starting point for later stereotypes surrounding the Asian woman, these figurines also put pressure on the fixed European vision of womanhood. These small, toylike objects paired with the period’s dazzling painted export mirrors serve as vehicles for reflecting on women’s self-perceptions—on how they wanted to see themselves versus the images imposed on them.

The exhibition closes with the long afterlives of chinoiserie into the 20th century and beyond. This was a period when modern Asian women directly grappled with the stereotypes created by the legacy of a historical style that conflated Asian femininity with traditional luxury objects and European consumption. The American imagination reshaped the style through film and photography. Like porcelain, these media provided a glossy substrate upon which fantasy images of the Asian woman could be projected and reproduced, and also contested.

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie is curated by Iris Moon, Associate Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition:

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Author: Iris Moon

256 pages, 172 illustrations

Paperback, 7 1/4" x 10 1/2"

ISBN: 9781588397928

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

www.metmuseum.org

Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900 @ Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC & Shanghai Museum

Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

February 28 – September 28, 2025

Shanghai Museum 

November 12, 2025 – March 16, 2026

Incense burner in the form of a goose, China, 

Ming dynasty (1368–1644), early 15th century. Bronze

H. 14 1/2 in. (36.8 cm); W. 18 3/4 in. (47 6 cm)

Purchase, The Vincent Astor Foundation Gift, 2020 - 2020.335a, b

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Water dropper in the form of a rhinoceros

China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), 15th century, Bronze

H. 2 1/8 in (5.4 cm); W. 5 in. (12.7 cm); D. 1 7/8 in. (4.8 cm)  

Purchase, The Vincent Astor Foundation Gift, 2015 - 2015.294

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Taihe" bell, note "Jiazhong"

China, Song dynasty (960–1279), ca. 1105, reinscribed ca. 1174

Bronze, H. 9 in. (22.8 cm)

Courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing

In ancient China, bronze vessels were emblems of ritual and power. A millennium later, in the period from 1100 to 1900, such vessels were rediscovered as embodiments of a long-lost golden age that was worthy of study and emulation. This “return to the past” (fugu) was part of a widespread phenomenon across all the arts to reclaim the virtues of a classical tradition. An important aspect of this phenomenon was the revival of bronze casting as a major art form. Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900 aims to be the most comprehensive study of Chinese bronzes during this period. This exhibition, co-organized by The Met and the Shanghai Museum, where it will open following its display in New York, presents the new aesthetic represented by these creative adaptations of the past, while exploring their cultural and political significance throughout China’s long history.

“While bronze as an art form has long held a significant role throughout China’s history, this exhibition explores an often-overlooked time period when a resurgence of craftsmanship and artistic achievements revitalized the medium,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Bringing together major loans from institutions in China alongside works from The Met collection, this exhibition offers viewers an important opportunity to better understand the lasting aesthetic and cultural impact of bronze objects.”

The exhibition is divided into five thematic and chronological sections that explicate over 200 works of art—an array of bronze vessels complemented by a selection of paintings, ceramics, jades, and other media. Some 100 pieces from The Met collection will be augmented by nearly 100 loans from major institutions in China, Japan, Korea, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States to present the most comprehensive narrative of the ongoing importance of bronzes as an art medium throughout China’s long history. Featured in the exhibition are around 60 loans from institutions in China, including major works such as a monumental 12th-century bell with imperial procession from the Liaoning Provincial Museum, documented ritual bronzes for Confucian temples from the Shanghai Museum, and luxury archaistic vessels made in the 18th-century imperial workshop from the Palace Museum, Beijing.

Vase with archaistic design

China, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), 14th century

Bronze, H. 15 1/2 in. (39.4 cm) ; Diam. 8 in. (20.3 cm); 

Diam. of rim 4 3/8 in. (11.1 cm); Diam. of foot 5 5/8 in. (14.3 cm) 

Purchase, Brooke Russell Astor Bequest, 2014 - 2014.449

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ritual vessel (xizun)

China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), 

Qianlong mark and period (1736–95)

Bronze, H. 15 3/16 in. (38.6 cm);

Diam. 4 5/16 in. (11 cm); Wt. 36,4 lb (16.5 kg)

Courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing

The exhibition begins with the section “Reconstructing Ancient Rites,” which introduces how emperors and scholar-officials commissioned ritual bronzes from the 12th to the 16th century as part of an effort to restore and align themselves with antique ceremonies and rites. The exhibition continues with “Experimenting with Styles,” illustrating how the form, decoration, and function of ancient bronzes were creatively reinterpreted from the 13th to the 15th century. The next section, “Establishing New Standards,” explores further transformations in both the aesthetic and technical direction of bronze making from the 15th to the 17th century. The fourth section, “Living with Bronzes,” features a display in the Ming Furniture Room (Gallery 218) to demonstrate how bronzes were used in literati life from the 16th to the 19th century. The last section, “Harmonizing with Antiquity,” examines how the deep scholarly appreciation of archaic bronzes during the 18th and 19th centuries led to a final flourishing of bronze production.

Pengliang Lu, Brooke Russell Astor Curator of Chinese Art at The Met, said: “This exhibition attempts a long-overdue reevaluation of later Chinese bronzes by seeking to establish a reliable chronology of this art form across the last millennium of Chinese history. The exhibition will also distinguish outstanding works from lesser examples based on their artistic and cultural merits.”

This exhibition provides visitors with a captivating experience as they follow the shifting cultural roles and evolving canons of beauty represented in later bronzes.

Installation view of Recasting the Past: 

The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900, 

on view February 28 – September 28, 2025 

at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Photo by Paul Lachenauer, courtesy of The Met

Installation view of Recasting the Past: 

The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900, 

on view February 28 – September 28, 2025 

at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Photo by Paul Lachenauer, courtesy of The Met

Installation view of Recasting the Past: 

The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900, 

on view February 28 – September 28, 2025 

at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Photo by Paul Lachenauer, courtesy of The Met

Later Chinese bronzes have long been stigmatized as poor imitations of ancient bronzes rather than being seen as fundamentally new creations with their own aesthetic and functional character. This exhibition redresses this misunderstanding by showcasing their artistic virtuosity, innovative creativity, and wide cultural impact. Through archaeologically recovered examples and cross-medium comparisons to a wide range of objects, the exhibition demonstrates the ongoing importance and influence of bronzes as well as how they inspired the form and function of works in other media.

Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900 is curated by Pengliang Lu, Brooke Russell Astor Curator of Chinese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. A beautiful and very interesting book!

Recasting the Past

The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100-1900

by Pengliang Lu

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Distributed by Yale University Press

304 pages, 9.50 x 11.20 in, 300 color illus.

Hardcover, 9781588397904, 15 April 2025

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 209-218

www.metmuseum.org

SHANGHAI MUSEUM

www.shanghaimuseum.net

Artist Huong Dodinh @ Pace Gallery, NYC - "Transcendence" Exhibition

Huong Dodinh: TRANSCENDENCE 

Pace Gallery, New York

May 3 – June 15, 2024 

HUONG DODINH 

Sans titre, 1990 

© Huong Dodinh, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of new and historic works by HUONG DODINH at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. Titled TRANSCENDENCE, the show, which marks the artist’s first- ever solo presentation in the US, brings together paintings and works on paper she has created over the course of her career, from the 1960s to the present day. TRANSCENDENCE is accompanied by a new catalogue from Pace Publishing, which will be released during the exhibition.

Huong Dodinh was born in Soc Trang, Vietnam in 1945. Forced to flee the country, her family sought refuge in Paris in 1953 after the outbreak of the First Indochina War. Huong Dodinh has lived and worked in the French capital ever since, cultivating a solitary life in service of her artistic pursuits. Insulating herself from art market trends, she has maintained a commitment to authenticity, purity, contemplation, and truth in her work since she began painting in the 1960s.

Over the last six decades, Huong Dodinh has devoted her practice to three central tenets—light, density, and transparency—through which she explores the fluidity of line, form, and negative space. By adopting a private and intensely regimented lifestyle, the artist has developed a distinctive way of making that blurs the boundaries between art and the everyday. Working alone and without any assistants in her Paris atelier, Huong Dodinh takes personal ownership over every step in her process, from sourcing mineral powders for her pigments in Provence to mounting her canvases and applying her paint. Creating her own pigments and organic binders by hand, Huong Dodinh applies thin layers of paint multiple times to forge transparent yet dense surfaces. Through her use of natural materials, she produces vibrant visual effects through absorptions and reflections of light in her elegant, minimalist compositions.

For the opening of her exhibition at Pace—which marks her second solo presentation with the gallery, following her show in Seoul last year—the artist travels to New York for the first time in her life. Holistically, the nearly 30 paintings and works on paper that figure in Huong Dodinh’s debut New York exhibition speak to her longstanding interest in conveying ideas about silence, light, and pure feeling through a language of abstraction.

TRANSCENDENCE begins with a rare figurative scene that the artist made in 1966. Rendered in pastel, La Neige depicts, as its title suggests, a landscape of snow-covered houses and streets. Huong Dodinh encountered snow for the first time when she emigrated from Vietnam to France, and, with this early composition, she explored her relationship to her new natural environment. In works from the following decades, when she leaned increasingly toward total abstraction, the artist continued to meditate on the ways that organic lines and shapes can reflect and represent the wonders of the natural world. Through her work, Duhong Dodinh strives to harmonize relationships and engage in a meaningful exchange with the world around her. As she has said, "Art is a process of opening oneself to others." Recent exhibitions by the artist include her 2021 retrospective at the Guimet Museum in Paris and her solo presentation at the Museo Correr in Venice during the 2022 Venice Biennale.

HUONG DODINH (b. 1945, Vietnam) was born in 1945 in Soc Trang, in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Duong Dodinh and her family were forced to flee their war torn home in 1953 and sought refuge in Paris, where the artist continues to live and work today. At a boarding school in Rambouillet, Dodinh witnessed snow for the first time, marveling at the blending of land and sky. She calls this luminescent scene her artistic “epiphany” and it continues to inspire her painting. Duong Dodinh studied at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965 to 1969, completing courses in a wide array of disciplines including engraving, lithography, frescoes, painting, and architecture. During this time, Huong Dodinh was deeply affected by the violence of the Vietnam War and the uprisings of May 1968. After a three-year break, Huong Dodinh was able to return to her artistic practice with a newfound sense of freedom. In the decades that followed, Huong Dodinh dedicated herself to painting, occasionally exhibiting in Paris and often encountering fellow artists based in France such as Peter Matisse, Joan Mitchell, and Lisa de Kooning.

 

Duong Dodinh is the recipient of several important awards and distinctions including, 1st Prize at the International Grand Prize for Painting in Cannes (1981), the Silver Cross of Merit and French Dedication (1996), and the Vice President Maison de la Culture d'Asie Orientale (1997). She presented a solo exhibition in 2021 at the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, and has participated in group presentations at FRAC de Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, as well as the major contemporary art exhibition Triptyque in Angers.

PACE GALLERY NEW YORK

540 West 25th Street, New York City

www.pacegallery.com

Artist Xie Nanxing @ Capitain Petzel, Berlin - "f o r a d e c a s a" Exhibition

Xie Nanxing: f o r a d e c a s a

Capitain Petzel, Berlin

25 April - 1 June 2024

Capitain Petzel presents f o r a d e c a s a, a solo exhibition of paintings by Xie Nanxing (b. 1970, Chongqing, lives and works in Beijing and Chengdu).

f o r a d e c a s a is comprised of eight paintings which represent a complete body of work. The title, an abstraction of the Portuguese “fora de casa”, as in “jogo fora de casa” – the away game – reveals this series’ origins: while visiting Lisbon Xie Nanxing came across a notebook, the vibrant green pages of which were each marked with the lines of a football pitch. Perhaps a fun gift for the child whose bedroom walls are adorned with posters of footballers, or possibly a serious tool for the tactician for whom each match is an obsession. The markings of the football pitch – rendered most clearly against a comparable green background in f o r a d e c a s a # 1 – became the basis for this group of paintings, both as a loosely interpreted formal structure for each new work and as a catalyst for their content.

Football is a paradox. So trivial yet so serious. It is not a matter of life and death, the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly reputedly said: it is much more important than that. Or perhaps it is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, said Gary Lineker, the Germans always win. Painting is also a paradox, at least for Xie Nanxing. It is not the truth, he has said, but neither is it just a game. It is “more like a game that is close to the truth, or rather a truth-mimicking game”. He has expressed a “mistrust” of painting, and yet he has spent the last three decades engaged in a deliberate and meticulous studio painting practice.

Nowhere is Xie Nanxing’s ambivalent, conflictual attitude towards painting more apparent than in the “canvas print” technique which he has often returned to over the last fifteen years and which he uses in several of these paintings. f o r a d e c a s a # 8, for example, is ostensibly the most abstract of the paintings in the exhibition – we see a central green circle, perhaps a centre circle, overlaid with faintly stippled polychromatic marks. As we continue to look, traces of figures begin to emerge to the left of the canvas, while to the right we see a harder-edged form and a rich patch of green reminiscent of the first painting in this series. These marks are in fact the literal traces of another painting which was made on an unstretched canvas that had been laid over the top of the surface we now see, such that some of the paint seeped through. That painting was then removed, never to be shown, and we are left with its “shadows” – evidence of painting having taken place.

And yet in this same series Xie Nanxing also embraces sheer painterly bravura, albeit interrupted by football scorecards, while in overtly citing Goya’s The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters (and not for the first time) Xie embraces his work’s place in a longer tradition of painting. Some paintings suggest abstraction, but others are uncharacteristically direct in their figuration. A football match can be tense and tactical, but it can also be an explosion of excitement. Catenaccio or heavy metal football. “Xie Nanxing’s paintings cannot be cast in the camps of either aestheticized objecthood or conceptual dematerialization”, the curator and art historian Ruth Noack has acutely observed, “they hover firmly in between”. 

CAPITAIN PETZEL

Karl Marx Alle 45 - 10178 Berlin

www.capitainpetzel.de

Chen Ke: New Year greeting card for Kering

Kering invites prominent contemporary Chinese artist Chen Ke to celebrate Chinese New Year

Chen Ke, Dragon Boat 

Image Courtesy of Kering

In honor of the upcoming Chinese New Year in February 2024, Kering has invited Chen Ke, a prominent female contemporary Chinese artist, to collaborate on a crossover art project titled "Dragon Boat". The project empowers imagination and go beyond traditional cultural symbols, conveying a contemporary artistic touch to ring in a new year of prosperity.

Born in the 1970s, Chen Ke has witnessed the rapid development of China. In her creative career, she has skillfully intertwined Chinese traditional culture with Western culture. She typically uses the oil painting medium to evoke experiences and memories while signaling open-ended growth.

Her oil painting masterpiece "Dragon Boat" draws inspiration from the ancient Chinese legend of dragons. People endow this creature, derived from imagination, with free forms and personalities, embodying rich emotions. 

On the vast icy surface, a dragon boat with a non-traditional shape slowly approaches a little girl dressed in winter clothes. The narrative context originates from traditional Chinese roots, but takes a different path, full of whimsy. The dragon boat is not just a boat nor a traditional symbol – it represents living beings, nature, and the universe. The dialogue between the child and the dragon boat transcends language to speak to the heart. The artist has expressed hope and joy in a world of imagination, presenting a unique and unrestricted wish in the Year of the Dragon. 

Collaborating with Chinese artists on Lunar New Year campaigns has become a tradition for Kering: an important moment to pay homage to Chinese traditions with a contemporary twist. In 2023, the Group collaborated with contemporary Chinese painter Peng Wei, whose artwork That Year celebrated harmony of humans and nature via biodiversity protection. In 2022, Kering welcomed the year of the Tiger by commissioning contemporary calligrapher’s Xu Jing auspicious brushstroke. In 2020, papercut artist Wen Qiwen and her piece Gazing at the sky beyond the clouds presented a playful nod to Kering’s Chinese name “kaiyun”. The year before，Kering’s new year greetings saw another word play twist with artist Xu Bing’s innovative "English square character" calligraphy. These collaborations not only showcase Kering's support for art but also reflect its continuous pursuit of innovation and diversity.

In the upcoming Year of the Dragon, Kering and Chen Ke will present fascinating and excellent works of art. They will echo the Group’s signature mission, "Empowering Imagination", while aligning with Kering’s core concept of creativity and innovation, reflecting its core value of empowering women. This has long been supported by Kering’s Women In Motion program that shines a light on women’s contribution to culture and the arts. Earlier, Chen Ke was interviewed on the Kering Women In Motion official WeChat account, sharing her own creative vision.

In addition to the printed version of the artist's original artwork as a New Year greeting card, this crossover creative project also includes digital formats. Starting from January 23rd, Kering is also launching the "Kering Creative Relay" social challenge on its official Red account, inviting the public to participate in a New Year's wish campaign. 

Chen Ke Biography

Chen Ke, born in 1978 in Tongjiang, Sichuan province, currently lives and works in Beijing.She holds a master’s degree from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

Chen Ke launched her career in Beijing after obtaining a BA from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2002 and an MFA in 2005 from the same faculty. Chen is among the generation witnessing the rapid development of China. Traditional Chinese culture and Western culture have intertwined throughout her growth and career.

In Chen’s early works, a fragile little girl was often depicted in a surrealistic background, struggling with a reversed reality, or wallowing in nostalgia in a lonely and innocent manner. Since 2012, Chen began to use the real figures in her photographic works as the object of description. From Frida to Monroe, she expressed her feelings in real life through the interpretation of these characters, especially the situation of women in society. And the experience of time and life.

In 2018, Chen set out on a new series, attempting to deal with the genuine feelings she has about her father. In these paintings, she managed to approach her personal experience and understanding of life in a more straightforward method. Through a series of mixed media paintings and installations inspired by the daily talk with the artist’s father, Chen discussed about youth, characteristic, family and aging in her solo exhibition The Real Deal is Talking with Dad at Yuz Museum (Shanghai, China).

In 2020, Chen debuts the Bauhaus Gal series. These portraits are based on the zeitgeist-charged archive photos of the Bauhaus. Chen prefers the classical conventions when delineating the faces of these pioneering young women of modern times. Immersed in their own world and in deep thought, they are completely oblivious of the gazes from the outside. While transforming into painting, these archive images undergo “physical implants” so that the painter can relive certain moments in life and recollect involuntary memories such as smell, light and touch, thereby reviving those black and white figures in these historical records. Her awareness of medium from years of painting practice helps her to establish a link between the ancient spirit and contemporary sentiments.

Chen Ke plots her art inside her own script, involving the medium of painting in the mutual generation of experiences and memories to endeavor an open-ended development. 

About Kering

A global Luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods and Jewelry: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, Ginori 1735 as well as Kering Eyewear and Kering Beauté.

www.kering.com

Zhang Enli @ Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong - "Faces" Exhibition

Zhang Enli. Faces

Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong

24 January – 9 March 2024 

ZHANG ENLI

Art Museum Director, 2022

Oil on canvas

250 x 200 cm / 98 3/8 x 78 3/4 in

©️ Zhang Enli

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: JJYPHOTO

ZHANG ENLI

A Man Reading ‘The Castle’, 2023

Oil on canvas 

200 x 180 cm / 78 3/4 x 70 7/8 in

©️ Zhang Enli

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: JJYPHOTO

‘Sometimes, the obscured object also creates a trace with the passing of time. This is the origin of my recent abstract paintings. When I look at a wall, or sky, it is full of traces, and then I name these traces after someone; it becomes very interesting, it is visible yet invisible.’—Zhang Enli

Using the outside world as a mirror, Zhang Enli often documents the more prosaic aspects of contemporary life. Titled ‘Faces’, the inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s new location in Hong Kong features new paintings by the artist. These gestural canvases reflect Zhang Enli’s progression to looser, freer brushwork that has become prominent in the artist’s style in recent years and reveals the artist’s compelling and continued exploration into abstract form.

Zhang Enli first gained acclaim in the 1990s for symbolic, figurative paintings. Within these early works, the perspective was often skewed to heighten the drama of the object’s shape, or to enlarge its symbolic importance. Zhang Enli has frequently returned to a personal iconography centred on the everyday aspects of contemporary life, drawn to imagery of quotidian objects that are sensitively rendered and imbued with stories. In more recent years, the artist has turned to the outside world, urban dwellings and nature, blurring the boundaries between inside and out. In a series of installations, known as Space Paintings, Zhang Enli paints directly onto the walls of a room to create immersive environments. These range from the abstract, where colour and gesture recall the sights and sounds of a particular place, to more figurative reproductions.

The exhibition in Hong Kong focuses on Zhang Enli’s expressive new possibilities. While anchored in figuration with descriptive titles, Zhang Enli seeks to capture the ‘essence’ of his subjects rather than their physical representation through these works. New paintings for the exhibition such as ‘A Guest from Afar’ (2023), ‘Melon Farmers’ (2023) and ‘Art Museum Director’ (2022) are made with a diverse palette and application – dynamic brushstrokes are overlaid with colourful spheres, indicating a style in the artist’s painterly aesthetic. In these works, Zhang Enli projects his own concerns and recollections onto the canvas, fusing the real and the imagined, in highly personal impressions.

Literature has had a lasting influence on Zhang Enli’s creative practice, in particular ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ by Sherwood Anderson, which he first encountered in college in 1985. Anderson’s depictions of characters, detailed observations and the desire to see beneath the surface of life, has reminded the artist of his own experience and memories with his family, and drawn his attention to fate of ‘the ordinary people’. The ‘faces’ of the characters are no longer important, they became a symbol, leaving traces of their identity and life stories in the artwork titles. ‘A Man Reading “The Castle”’ (2023) refers to ‘The Castle’, the last novel by Franz Kafka, who died before he finished the book. This sense of mystery and uncertainty within the book, as well as for humanity at large, has remained a constant source of inspiration for the artist, who has revisited the work countless times.

ZHANG ENLI

A Guest from Afar, 2023

Oil on canvas

200 x 400 cm / 78 3/4 x 157 1/2 in

©️ Zhang Enli

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: JJYPHOTO

Zhang Enli in the studio, 2023

©️ Zhang Enli

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: JJYPHOTO

ZHANG ENLI - SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Zhang Enli was born in Jilin province in 1965. He graduated from Wuxi Technical University, Arts and Design Institute in 1989. Zhang currently lives and works in Shanghai. Zhang Enli’s solo exhibition held in numerous important institutions, including Long Museum (West Bund) (2023); Long Museum (Chongqing) (2021); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2020); ; Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy (2019); K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai (2019); Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2018); Hauser & Wirth, New York, USA (2018); Firstsite, Colchester, UK (2017); Moca, Taipei (2015); ShanghART, Shanghai (2015); ; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2014); Villa Croze, Genoa, Italy (2013); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2013); Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2011); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2009), a presentation which travelled to Kunsthalle Bern, Berne, Switzerland (2009) etc.

His works also featured in group exhibitions, such as, Start Museum, Shanghai (2023); UCCA Edge, Shanghai (2021); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2018), Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, AntwerpBelgium (2018); 1st Antarctic Biennale, Antarctica (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2016); PAC-Milan Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy (2015); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2015); Tate Modern, London, UK (2015); Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2014); Contemporary Art Museum of the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA (2013); Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK (2013); KochiMuziris, Kochi, India (2012); The First Chinese Oil Painting Biennial, Instituto Paranaense de Arte, Curitiba, Brazil (2011); The 8th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2010); The 7th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2008); Villa Manin- Centre for Contemporary Art Passariano, Italy (2006) etc.

Zhang Enli‘s works are in numerous museum collections, including K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; M+Collection, Hong Kong; Long Museum, Shanghai; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Yuz Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia; SIFANG Art Museum, Nanjing; La Maison LVMH Collection, Paris, France; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK; Tate Modern, London, UK; The UBS Art Collection, Zürich, Switzerland; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Start Museum, Shanghai.

HAUSER & WIRTH HONG KONG

G/F, 8 Queen’s Road Central, Central, Hong Kong

www.hauserwirth.com

The Cutting Edge of Lu Shengzhong @ Chambers Fine Art, New York

The Cutting Edge of Lu Shengzhong

Chambers Fine Art, New York

December 4, 2023 – April 14, 2024

Chambers Fine Art prsents The Cutting Edge of Lu Shengzhong. In the history of Chambers Fine Art, Lu Shengzhong (1952-2022) played a role of particular importance, both chronologically and as an indication of the guiding principles of the gallery after It was established in New York in 2000. This display of selected works is a tribute to Lu’s singular vision as an artist and as an influence on several generations of younger artists at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing where he taught for many years. 

When Christophe Mao made the decision to open a gallery devoted to contemporary Chinese art in the years immedIately before the millennium, there was an urgent need to identify a group of artists who did not conform to what had already become a stereotype in the West, the flashy oil paintings associated with Political Pop and Gaudy Art. When he was introduced to Lu in Beijing, he immediately felt that he would be an ideal candidate for his first exhibition of contemporary art as at that time the plan was to have alternate exhibitions of contemporary art and Classical Chinese art and scholar’s objects.  

Born in Shandong Province China in 1952, Lu Shengzhong graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1987, where he had been associated with the Department of Folk Arts.  Continuing his research, he made numerous trips in Shanxi Province and other areas where he developed considerable expertise in the tradition of paper-cuts pasted on walls, windows etc., particularly for Chinese New Year.  He was the author of numerous books on the subject.  

Simultaneously, he was establishing a reputation with his own remarkable paper cuts in which he said, he “walked away from the cultural confusion of the time and turned back to the villages, to traditional Chinese folk art.” He began working on a very large scale, as in the 1990 installation Hall of Calling the Soul  filled with thousands of the “little red figures ” that were to become his signature as a paper cut artist.  

The title of Lu Shengzhong’s first exhibition at Chambers Fine Arts, First Encounter (November 11, 2001 – January 2, 2002) refers not only to the first meeting between Christophe Mao and Lu Shengzhong but also to the introduction of Lu’s art to the United States. In the large vertical panels of Poetry of Harmony, lines of what appear to be Chinese characters are in fact left-over scraps of paper from the intricately cut circular forms at the top. The relationship between positive and negative forms is of crucial importance in Lu’s art. Favorably reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times (January 5, 2001), he noted that Lu “used this fragile medium , notable for its lacey, intricate patterns, to create a temple-like installation.” 

Two more exhibitions followed at Chambers Fine Art, Lu Shengzhong’s The Book of Humanity (November  6, 2003 – January 4, 2004) and Square Earth, Round Heaven Lu Shenzhong Works 2007. In the former, there were two series of works, sets of books in which red on black or black on red collages were gathered in book form, some with Western style bindings, some with traditional Chinese sewn bindings, and Human Bricks in which the hundreds of sheets of red paper from which“little red figures “ had been cut were assembled in multi-layered collages. In the latter, Lu moved into three dimensions, assembling multiple layers of paper into cubes and spheres, described by Robert E. Harriet, Jr., as the “visual and spatial correlates of round/heaven  and square/earth that permeates Chinese art and architecture.  

In his role as an educator, Lu Shengzhong became the director of the department of experimental art at CAFA in 2004 and retained that position until his retirement.  Lu Shengzhong’s achievement as an artist was to develop the traditional Chinese craft of papercut in such a way that it was possible to use it not only for small scale individual works but also for installations of great complexity. For those who had the privilege to watch Lu Shengzhong at work, using his scissors with unerring skill so that complex designs in which positive and negative forms emerged effortlessly without any preliminary drawings, it was no suppose that the same gift could be used in the creation of three-dimensional versions of his “little red men.”  

CHAMBER FINE ART

55 East 11th Street, New York, NY 10003

www.chambersfineart.com

Song Dong Exhibition @ Pace Gallery, NYC - ROUND

Song Dong: ROUND

Pace Gallery, New York 

July 14 – August 19, 2023 

SONG DONG 

Zou Ma Deng (Spinning Lanterns) (detail), 2022-2023 

© Song Dong, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents Song Dong's latest series of works at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York, marking the artist’s first overseas solo exhibition since the COVID-19 pandemic. Titled Song Dong: ROUND, this exhibition focuses on Song’s practice over the past three years, placing ancient Chinese philosophy in a contemporary context and offering new understandings of ideas that figure prominently in his work.

Song Dong, who is one of the most important figures of the Conceptual art movement in China, blurs the boundaries between art and life in his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Song specializes in borrowing familiar, everyday objects and images as part of his artistic explorations. His open and highly speculative approach to art making lends his work a distinctive lightness that has earned him international attention and acclaim.

In his exhibition with Pace in New York, the artist uses the shape of the circle, which has rich meaning in traditional Chinese philosophy, as a central visual element. The new series Da Cheng Ruo Que, which translates to "the highest perfection is like imperfection," takes its title from ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu's seminal text Tao Te Ching. In these works, small-scale window frames are assembled into sculptures that forge nearly perfect circles, while still retaining zigzag notches at their edges.

Song Dong began the Da Cheng Ruo Que series in 2020, when, stranded in his studio due to the pandemic lockdown, he decided to make a gift for his daughter. The artist gathered the materials left over from the production of his previous series Usefulness of Uselessness, which was made from discarded construction waste produced during China's urban renewal process. The artist’s decision to reuse the leftovers of these discarded materials echoes the installation he created with his mother, Waste Not, which is his most internationally recognized work—it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009 and has since traveled to institutions in several other countries, including the Barbican Centre in London.

Using his mother's values and philosophies surrounding the preservation of seemingly useless objects to create a special work for his daughter, the artist continued to explore and experiment during the long hours of lockdown. Inevitably, he incorporated his experiences and feelings from the past three years into his process so that the work gradually took on its own form, expanding from a single piece into a new and complete series.

In Pace’s gallery space, this series of circular sculptures of various sizes are scattered on the walls like clusters of stars in the universe or cells in a microscopic view. The windows in these sculptures do not provide access to the outside world, but rather reflect the scenes before them, leaving illusionistic impressions on their colorful stained- glass surfaces. The title of the work alludes to Eastern philosophical speculation: what people perceive as perfection may be imperfect, while this seemingly deficient state can lead to more possibilities and a greater sense of completeness, which is the message the artist decided to share with his daughter.

Continuing its focus on the circle, the exhibition also features the light installation series Zou Ma Deng (Spinning Lanterns) and the sculptural work Thousand Hands, both of which were created in the past year. The artist created his first iteration of Zou Ma Deng during a four-month residency in London in 2000, using traditional moving-image techniques to represent his relationship with the environment and his imprint on urban spaces. In this latest work, Song’s bodily presence is erased, leaving the viewer with only the world around the artist as seen and documented from his own perspective over the last three years.

While Thousand Hands is forged from a discarded object, it is intended to be placed behind a statue of the Buddha Guanyin, whose thousand hands form a disc in a radial pattern of eyes, symbolizing the gods' care for the mortal world. In stark contrast to the purity of a perfectly crafted industrial product, this piece contains many black lines that were created during the firing process and are meant to be removed by the glaze factory. These randomly generated black textures shimmer with a mysterious aura that attracted the artist and, in some ways, coincided with his thinking on Da Cheng Ruo Que. Laying the vertical panel flat, the artist allows the eyes of the Bodhisattva, which originally overlooked the world, to become the object of the viewer’s gaze. At the same time, this work invites viewers to look at each other in a new way, evoking a contemplative experience and new realization.

SONG DONG's (b. 1966, Beijing) conceptual practice emerged from the avant-garde and experimental arts community in China, engaging with various forms of media including installation, performance, video, painting, and sculpture. His performances in the mid- and late 1990s positioned him as a major figure in the burgeoning contemporary art scene in Beijing, which often serves as the setting for his reflections. Song is one of the founding members of Polit-Sheer-Form Office (2005–), a multi-disciplinary art group centered on collective ideals and practices as a means of commentary on the political, spiritual, and cultural aspects of life in China.

PACE

540 West 25th Street, New York

www.pacegallery.com

Shen Wei Exhibition @ Flowers Gallery, London - A Season Particular

Shen Wei: A Season Particular

Flowers Gallery, London

5 May - 3 June 2023

SHEN WEI 

Untitled, 2020 

Chromogenic print 

© Shen Wei, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

SHEN WEI 

Celosie 9909, 2021 

Chromogenic print 

© Shen Wei, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

Flowers Gallery presents A Season Particular, a solo exhibition by New York-based Chinese-American artist SHEN WEI. This exhibition of sensuous photographs explores notions of gender, form and desire, reflecting a practice which Shen Wei describes as “finding the spiritual and abstract similarities between our bodies and nature and emphasising the harmony, fragility, and interconnectedness of both.” In this exhibition, closely cropped figurative forms are interspersed with images of plants and blossoms, evoking a dreamlike sense of contemplation and calm.

According to Shen Wei: 

“The unique beauty and interplay between the human body and nature aim to elicit a sense of awe, wonder, and appreciation for the world around us, as well as a way to explore more profound spiritual and philosophical questions about the nature of existence and the purpose of life."

SHEN WEI

Born in 1977 and raised in Shanghai, Shen Wei is based in New York City. He is known for his intimate portraits of himself and others, as well as his poetic landscapes and still-life photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, with venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China, the Hasselblad Foundation in Göteborg, Sweden, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, CNN, Aperture, ARTnews, Paris Review, Financial Times, Le Figaro, and American Photo. Shen Wei’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Chinese in America, CAFA Art Museum, and the Ringling Museum of Art, among others. Shen Wei is a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts Residency, the Asian Cultural Council Arts & Religion Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Grant. He holds an MFA in photography, video, and related media from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a BFA in photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Related post on Wanafoto: Shen Wei: Self @ Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong, 2021

FLOWERS GALLERY 

82 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP 

www.flowersgallery.com

Zhang Xiaogang @ Pace Gallery, Hong Kong - Lost

Zhang Xiaogang: Lost

Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

March 21 – May 4, 2023

ZHANG XIAOGANG

Light No. 5, 2022 

© Zhang Xaiogang, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents Zhang Xiaogang: Lost, an exhibition of works produced by Zhang Xiaogang over the past three years, at its Hong Kong gallery. Coinciding with Zhang Xiaogang: Mayflies at the Long Museum West Bund, Pace’s exhibition in Hong Kong spotlights eleven new and recent paintings related to the works on view at the Shanghai institution.

A hugely influential contemporary painter in China, Zhang depicts the absurd but intriguing inner experience of mortals, evoking the original impetus from one's own life consciousness. In the Light series on display in his exhibition with Pace in Hong Kong, the artist paints patches of light delicately. Zhang’s gentle, painterly touch in these meditative and tranquil works—which can be traced to the artist’s Big Family series from the 1990s—has gradually become the most recognizable feature of his practice. In a departure from the portraiture that established Zhang's fame, the artist’s new experimentations focus on still life painting. Oftentimes in Zhang’s work, inanimate objects seem to possess emotional depth, while his alienated human figures are almost devoid of life.

The exhibition also includes Jump No. 6 (2022), an oil painting on paper, and Jump No. 8 (2022), an oil painting on canvas. These works reflect the artist’s sensitivity and finesse in his approach to different mediums and materials. Jumping figures have been the subjects of Zhang’s works over the past few years. However, the dynamism implied by the titles of these paintings is upended by their content: human figures appear to be suspended in solidified air, impervious to gravity’s pull. This visual phenomenon might be understood in the context of the global pandemic’s effects on time and space. The artist intuits and absorbs his own experiences, creating works of both psychological and physical heft. Through the ancient technique of painting, he weaves the turbulence of contemporary life into the eternal predicament of the human soul in theatrical, absurdist scenes that might be interpreted as poetic fables of the present day.

ZHANG XIAOGANG (b. 1958, Kunming, China), graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in oil painting. He now lives and works in Beijing. Since the 90s, Zhang has expressed himself through styles of coldness and restraint and that of daydreams to articulate the collective psychological memory and emotions prominent in his times. This means of absurdly representing and simulating society, the collective, personal, family, blood relation is a reinterpretation of art, emotions, and life. It holds heavy significance in the contemporary world, and is the best manifestation of the sense of worldliness in China in contemporary art. His works have been exhibited in the Venice Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennale (awarded the Sao Paulo Biennale Bronze Prize, 1994), Guangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Shanghai Biennale, and other important exhibitions within and outside of the country. He has also exhibited in many important organizations and museums over the world. His works have been collected by the Tate, Centre Pompidou, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Fukuoka Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Long Museum of Shanghai, and various institutional and private collections within and outside of the country.

PACE HONG KONG

12/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

www.pacegallery.com

Bi Rongrong @ A Thousand Plateaus Art Space, Chengdu - Animal in Two Dimensions

Bi Rongrong

Animal in Two Dimensions

A Thousand Plateaus Art Space, Chengdu

October 15 - December 11, 2022

Bi Rongrong

Animal in Two Dimensions

A Thousand Plateaus Art Space, Chengdu

© Ri Rongrong / A Thousand plateaus Space

Bi Rongrong's creation is known for "patterns" and "weaving". She extracts the surface patterns from buildings, posters, animals and plants, landscapes, or abstract objects, and then weaves and combines them. Her creation starts from painting, which not only includes painting, video, installation and other media, but also her own unique weaving craftsmanship. She uses basic textile techniques to weave wool, plastic, metal wire and other materials into collected patterns and present their unique detail and texture. Among them, she even adds materials such as luminous light points and metal sheets to form a comprehensive plane structure. On the other hand, Bi Rongrong is also using the "weaving" technique to comb her own creative journey. Her different works are like strings or bases in the process of weaving. These works extend and grow in their own ways, and together form a closely intertwined whole.

Through the process of reorganization, integration, and confrontation, these patterns reveal the culture, knowledge, social, or natural evolution context of their respective groups and places that were originally hidden from the eye. As the curator Xu Sheng put it: the wall is the pattern of architecture, the street is the pattern of city, the plant is the pattern of nature, and the wrinkle of clothing is the pattern of life... The patterns are often abstract, silent, and expressionless, but their overall shape, delicate details, and texture materials all reveal the invisible power hidden in time, life, or natural circulation. The study and observation of these patterns, as well as the meditation and imagination that come from them, are not only a kind of sorting out the complicated appearances in the tide of the times, but also a practice of the ancestors’ saying "learning from the nature of things".

Different patterns are like puzzles waiting to be answered, while Bi Rongrong walks through these puzzles and turns her work into another pattern. From the brush to the extension of light and shadow, from the painting plane to the real space, then further to a broader plane, these works travel through different materials and dimensions. They are still like a puzzle, but they are endowed with spiritual life because of their organic structure. It is not fixed, but growing. It is an animal in a woven plane. It absorbs new materials and ideas to obtain nutrients and form works; Each line in the work is like one of its nerve endings, extending outward. This is the origin of the exhibition title "Animal in two dimensions". Now, it is about to show part of its true face in A Thousand Plateaus Art Space.

Curator: Xu Sheng

A THOUSAND PLATEAUS ART SPACE 千高原艺术空间

South Square, Tiexiang Temple Riverfront, High-tech District, Chengdu, Sichuan

www.1000plateaus.org