Group Exhibition Art Fairs Grand Palais, Paris, France
preview oct 19th
MadeIn Company 没顶公司| SUN Xun 孙逊 |WU Yiming 邬一名|
YU Youhan 余友涵|ZHANG Enli 张恩利|ZHOU Tiehai 周铁海|
ShanghART Gallery is delighted to present a group show of Contemporary Chinese art including painting, sculpture, installation and woodcut by Yu Youhan, Zhou Tiehai, Sun Xun, Wei Guangqing, and MadeIn Company, among others.
The exquisitely pristine 106 (2010) and 105 (2010) are part of Yu Youhan’s successive ‘Circular Painting’ series. The many different strokes, braids, whirls, and interlaced forms that fill these canvases show both dense and opaque sedimentations.
The beautifully balanced Yi Meng Shen No. XIV (2005) demonstrates Yu Youhan’s mastery of possibilities for landscape structure and effects as applied to the familiar territory of his home region. Its panoramic view emphasizes the grandeur of the valley and includes a compendium of elements – cliffs, valley, trees, dwellings and sky.
As one of the main protagonists to emerge in the avantgarde-movement in the 1990’s Yu Youhan’s iconic images have had a major impact on a generation of younger artists.
MadeIn Company presents two distinctive installations: No-Fly (2011) and Perfect Volume (2011). Through its play with scale, substance, and space, and the obsession with notions of authenticity, sincerity and truth, the works appropriate visual and conceptual references in their formal aesthetic features. No-Fly is a perfect copy of a classic antique sculpture in the form of an angel, here however, with wings and head inhibited by a black net. The second installation Perfect Volume consists of 29 pairs of black stilettos arranged in a perfect circle with minimum effort to maximum effect.
MadeIn continues to expand its projects, engaging further with the process of art production, consumption and display. Since the group’s inception in 2009, MadeIn’s paintings, sculptures and installations have frequently been shown in both solo presentations and group exhibitions.
Like MadeIn, Zhou Tiehai’s unsettling yet amusing practice includes appropriating iconic imagery. The artist actively subverts painterly craft through his refined painting techniques. Le Sabotajnik (2008) illustrates Zhou Tiehai’s investigation into culture’s, especially French culture’s historical baggage at large. Le Sabotajnik consists of a text and 118 individual images displayed in a grid-like structure. The sheer exhaustion of imagery is part of an ever-evolving project of making subtle structures of powers visible and leveling out all forms of hierarchy.
Sun Xun’s Some actions which haven’t yet been defined in the revolution (2011) is an set of nine wood printing blocks. The wood blocks are carefully prepared as relief matrix, which means the areas to show ‘white’ are cut away with a chisel leaving the image to show in black at the original surface level. Sun Xun is best known for his extraordinary animations combining political cartoons and academic painting. The political commentary is stated obliquely as mirrored in the title of the piece. The force of his critical sensibility, however, is clear, as is his protean talent. History is here subtly displayed by other means… namely via woodblock printing that originated in China in antiquity.
Like Sun Xun, Wei Guangqing takes his point of departure in Chinese history. Jin Pingmei No. 45 (2007) references ‘Jin Pingmei’ which is a Chinese naturalistic novel (about a lustful merchant wealthy enough to marry six wives and concubines) composed during the late Ming Dynasty. Wei Guangqing’s painting draws on ancient culture while borrowing Western pop aestetics, here specifically Robert Indiana’s LOVE as sheer background. By combining opposing concepts such as past and present, the figurative and the abstract, he represents these as fluid heterogeneous ideas that cannot be viewed in isolation. With no immediate or easy way to decode these cultural compilations, Jin Pingmei No. 45 works like delicate informative fragments with no easy way out.
For more information on available work please contact the gallery: info@shanghartgallery.com
Brief Biographies
MadeIn Ltd. Is an art agency (initiated by conceptual artist Xu Zhen) based in Shanghai that specializes in staging art related projects. MadeIn’s curatorial practice debuted September 2009 with two extensive exhibitions featuring contemporary art from the Middle East at venues in New York City and Shanghai, They have since exhibited widely at acclaimed institutions, internationally as well as in China. Solo-exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern (2011) and IKON Gallery (2010), and S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium.
Sun Xun (1980) lives and works in Beijing. Recent solo-exhibitions include shows at LOUIS VUITTON, Taipei Maison, Taipei (2011), Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010), Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, Swizerland (2010), Yokohama Creativity Center, Yokohama, Japan (2010), Max Protech Gallery, NYC, USA (2009), The Drawing Center, NYC, USA (2009), Hammer Museum, L.A., USA (2008). He has also exhibites his work in numerous group-exhibibtions and film festival. His ’21 Grams’ was the first Chinese animation film to premiere at the Venice Film Festival (2010).
Yu Youhan (1943) lives and works in Shanghai. He is one of the main artists of Political Pop to emerge in the avantgarde movement of the 90’s. He has exhibited in the 22nd Sao Paulo Biennale (1994), 45th Venice Biennale (1993) and 1st Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 19919. Yu Youhan’s work has been shown widely nationally as well as internationally.
Zhou Tiehai (1966) lives and works in Shanghai. Zhou Tiehai has exhibited extensively at acclaimed institutions such as The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Kunsthal (Rotterdam), Shanghai Art Museum and Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin) and the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). Additionally, he participated in the 48th Venice Biennale, 5th Shanghai Biennale and 4th Gwangju Biennale.
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