What and who are these animals we have seen in Feng Shuo's paintings over the past few years? Were these people masquerading as animals or animals that had miraculously become people? Those owls or pigs that sat at the table, that giant panda fishing - how did they come to be there? What did they mean? Those children that wander through his paintings, sometimes with wings attached, were they angels or sprites, or just kids mucking about? Clearly this was an imaginative world he has created, or given birth to, but to understand what it might mean we must begin with the surface, with the very particular way it has been painted. At the tipping point in Europe when painting returned in the early Eighties after a decade and a half of being told it was extinct, it returned not as a ghost but replete with energetic gestures and strange figures. Many artists, Christopher Le Brun in England and Judit Reigl in France are just two examples, had found the figure returning of its own accord in the to and fro of making abstract paint marks. For Le Brun it was the figure of a horse that repeatedly emerged out of a mesh of lines, for Reigl the figure of a man. There was a sense then of paint being a primal material from which life could be coaxed - just as in many early myths the gods created human...
The works of Yayoi Kusama are categorized by critics into various artistic schools including feminism, minimalism, surrealism, art brut, pop art and abstract expressionism. However, in accordance with her description, she is only an obsessive artist. For her works, she attempts to present the deep-rooted contents featuring autobiography and sexual orientation. The methods she uses for creation include painting, soft sculpture, performance art and installation art. In the early period of creation, Yayoi Kusama developed her own distinct style that she was expert at combining dotted pattern featuring high color comparison and mirror to cover the surface of variant articles such as wall, floor, canvas, articles available at home and naked assistant). She was well-known due to the consistency of her dress and works, short garment and strong eye shadow. Yayoi Kusama once said that these visual characteristics originated from her hallucination and she considered that these dots made up an infinity net that stood for her life. What’s more, Yayoi Kusama also developed her unique feature “Reproduction”. Many of her works were displayed in the form of mushroom. After 1990s, Yayoi Kusama entered the field of commercial art to cooperate with the circle of garment design to present distinct garments characterized by unparalleled dots of Yayoi Kusama and started to sell many artistic commodities. Yayoi Kusama is also one of contemporary writers in Japan. In the wake of her return to Japan and settlement in 1978, she had published...
I dagars första timmar kan medvetandet omfattar världen. som handen gripa en solvarm sten. - Thomas Tranströmer In the first ray of daylight, consciousness can catch the world. Like the hand catches a warm stone under the sun. - Thomas Tranströmer (Swedish poet) Pan Xi paints women’s body with fluid water-based colour on Chinese silk. Each painting represents one woman. She paints them from their side, from their back. She paints their sensual breasts and rosy nipples exposed to us from behind their open shirts. Their body gestures, caught by the transparency of Chinese silk, are immaculate. They are dressed and yet undressed. Pan Xi paints beautiful clothes for them: gold and white lace in elegant patterns. Sometimes the laces are tight as if part of their skin: they reveal more of the body than conceal. Sometimes they fall behind in the background like extravagant drapery expanding the space where these women are in. The women sink in their own world, not responding to whosoever gazes at them - from whatever direction. They are self-contained, alone but not lonely. The smooth and fast drawn lines that embrace their body may remind you of the endless images of women in action in Degas’ world, but the purity within their body marks their existence as significantly different from the steamy hot Paris brothel. Nevertheless, the kind of seduction embodied in their gestures and actions is both sophisticated and sexy. The women in Pan...
The works of Yayoi Kusama are categorized by critics into various artistic schools including feminism, minimalism, surrealism, art brut, pop art and abstract expressionism. However, in accordance with her description, she is only an obsessive artist. For her works, she attempts to present the deep-rooted contents featuring autobiography and sexual orientation. The methods she uses for creation include painting, soft sculpture, performance art and installation art. In the early period of creation, Yayoi Kusama developed her own distinct style that she was expert at combining dotted pattern featuring high color comparison and mirror to cover the surface of variant articles such as wall, floor, canvas, articles available at home and naked assistant). She was well-known due to the consistency of her dress and works, short garment and strong eye shadow. Yayoi Kusama once said that these visual characteristics originated from her hallucination and she considered that these dots made up an infinity net that stood for her life. What’s more, Yayoi Kusama also developed her unique feature “Reproduction”. Many of her works were displayed in the form of mushroom. After 1990s, Yayoi Kusama entered the field of commercial art to cooperate with the circle of garment design to present distinct garments characterized by unparalleled dots of Yayoi Kusama and started to sell many artistic commodities. Yayoi Kusama is also one of contemporary writers in Japan. In the wake of her return to Japan and settlement in 1978, she had published...
Every artistic format's spiritual values evolve along with the changes of time, the same goes with Ink painting. Today, we live in an era that artistic languages constantly seek for innovation, and artistic concepts thrive on breakthroughs. Ink painting is right in the middle of such an era, a period of alternation or to say exploring the process of change. To realize changes, the key is for the artists to practice their own art, and reconstruct traditional ink painting through practice. That gives today's ink painting many possibilities, and it represents a world as big as artists' imagination can reach. The seven artists at this exhibition are Deshu Qiu, Jinsong Yang, Guoyuan Deng, Xinmao Chen, Hao Zhang, Hong Lei, and Quan Zhang. All of them have their own unique styles and are quite innovative in their creation of modern ink paintings. Languages and images are carriers of spirit. Artists' aesthetic spirit and concept of creation best show through language and image. Languages and images artists build through their visual experiences can be seen as a demonstration of their hidden inner spiritual world. In this exhibition, the artists either make a subversive revolution in materials or media to create personal signature pieces that match with the contemporary aesthetic spirit, or borrow western artistic concepts and languages to combine east and west and reconstruct water & ink on some fundamental level. All these works contain artists' deep understanding of ink painting, furthermore...
Drifting is a collection of works that has been companying JIANG Zheng Gen for years. The canvas with simple lines of colors and the light emitted from it produces an unique visual effect, where the neat patterns enchant the audience with illusionary space without borders. “Drifting” in the context depicts not only the illustration of space and time but also the care of life, which presents a solution to approach the urban solitude, but in the meantime, an abstracted concept from the artist on the impression of urban texture. By continuing the creation of “Drifting”, his spirits has been experiencing subtle transformation to reach its own destiny. It has revealed to us the tolerance and peace inside JIANG Zheng Gen and led us to his soul between the tranquil lines on his canvas. Above all, JIANG Zheng Hen’s works have convinced me the quote: “The essence of abstraction art is human spirit”.
M Art Center
1F, Building 2, 50 MoGanShan Rd.
Tel: +86 21 6299 6610
Email: martcenter@vip.163.com
Open in every Trusday to Saturday, from 10:30 to 18:30
