Booth E04
Galerie Urs Meile is pleased to announce its participation in this year’s ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair. Our presentation will focus on a selection of new works by emerging and established artists and will include works by Cao Yu, Hu Qingyan, Ju Ting, Li Gang, Meng Huang, Rebekka Steiger, Wang Xingwei, Yang Mushi and Zhang Xuerui.
With Cao Yu’s (b. 1988 in Liaoning, China) distinctive interdisciplinary practice, sharp and bold artistic language, she has become one of the leading young artists in the field of Chinese contemporary art. 90°C V (2019, marble, silk stocking, 55 x 48 x 36 cm) presents a marble from classical times modeled into the masterpiece of David, tightly bound in a soft feminine silk stocking. Two completely unrelated materials are closely intertwined in a well-matched battle. Cao Yu was recently included in “Gen. T List 2020.”
Hu Qingyan’s (b. 1982 in Shandong) sculptural language is a departure from traditional cognition. His thinking about sculpture revolves around the concepts of appearance and essence, randomness and inevitability, fragmentation and reorganization, which seem to be opposite but related. His new sculpture Empty Bowl (2019, marble, 23 x 76 x 68 cm) continues his artistic exploration of air’s participation in space and sculpture. The bowl is more like a remnant object demonstrating the power of air to shape material and space. His new institutional solo exhibition Necessary Rebundancy – Hu Qingyan Solo Exhibition will debut at the Guangdong Museum of Art on December 23, 2020.
Ju Ting (b. 1983 in Shandong) applies many layers of acrylic paint on top of each other over a wooden panel until obtaining a certain thickness. She then uses various methods to manipulate and model the stacked layers of color. The creation of the Pearl and Untitled series can be seen as a process of constantly maintaining balance between control and serendipity. Ju Ting’s creative approach applies external forces on each “image layer.” The cut, folded and torn picture presents plasticity, as if form is organically generated from within the image. (Untitled 061820, 2020, acrylic on board, 73 x 61 x 11 cm)
The Sketch Paintings series, begun in 2017, marks a new direction in Li Gang (b. 1986 in Dali, China)’s exploration of painting, and a multi-dimensional exploration of the “materiality” of painting. In constructing the painting, Li Gang not only moves the sketch, its edges, and the base color onto his large canvases in an analytical fashion, he also moves the instantaneous state and original impulse of the sketch along with them. This series was presented in his solo exhibition Nude Colour at Galerie Urs Meile Beijing this summer. We will present Rainwater (2019, oil on linen, 200 x 200 cm） from this series.
We will also exhibit new painting Lake of Rain No. 1 (2019, oil on canvas, 155 × 180 cm) by Meng Huang (b. 1966 in Henan) during his residency in Shanghai, as well as sketch painting of the same name. “Water” is a recurring theme in Meng Huang’s paintings. There are many paintings depicting water among his early black landscapes, paintings which are often extremely volumetric. The overall picture feels empty, cold, and desolate. Lake of Rain has a dense and viscous texture unique to south China. The waters here are ponds full of the joys of life and spring rain. It is worth mentioning that the sketch here is not a draft of an oil painting, but another medium of artistic expression completely independent of oil painting.
Rebekka Steiger (b. 1993 in Zurich, Switzerland) is one of the most exciting young painters in contemporary art. Through a layer-by-layer color rendering, Steiger transforms her perception of emotions and atmospheres into mysterious and delicate art pieces while achieving unexpected visual results. At our booth we will show skysailing (2019, tempera and oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm). Her latest institutional exhibition boxing the compass was held at Kunstmuseum Grenchen in Switzerland this summer.
Wang Xingwei (b. 1969 in Shenyang, China) continues his classic and delicate painting technique in depicting the scenes of absurdity. His new painting Still Life (Zhu Bajie) (2020, oil on canvas, 70 × 70 cm) depicts the lazy, greedy, lustful but kind and straightforward Zhu Bajie in the famous Chinese mythical novel “Journey to the West.” During the period of Art021, K11 Art Foundation will debut the three-person joint exhibition Forget the Horizon, presenting WangXingwei's typical paintings and ongoing and constantly developing artistic practices spanning from the “Old Lady” series from 2011 till now.
Yang Mushi (b. 1989 in Jiangxi, China) diligently works on his sculptural materials in vigorous acts of cutting, grinding and sharpening. As a final step, the surface is polished and covered with black lacquer, thus reducing the objects to dark shapes of strict aesthetics and a martial kind of beauty. Overlaying - Stick (2020, protective barrier, lacquer, 135 × 112 × 595 cm) alienates the form and function of the protective fence, producing a dangerous, upward-moving structure, a broken body built from reality.
Zhang Xuerui (b. 1979 in Shanxi, China) has broken from the excessively slow progression of before in her recent works, a shift that appears in the picture as relatively strong contrasts in color from one field to the next, or even within a cluster of color fields, in something like a high note suddenly bursting out of a musical movement, highlighting the sense of motion in the picture. But her basic methodology has not changed. Zhang Xuerui’s solo exhibition River with Three Buoys was held at Galerie Urs Meile Beijing this autumn. Aside from her unique grid painting (225 201906 (2019, acrylic on canvas, 150 × 150 cm)), we will also present her recent watercolour series Scattered Moss and installation work Red and White Checkered Cloth (2019, Ikea red and white checkered cloth, cotton thread, 170 × 167 cm (frame), 150 × 150 cm (work)) at our booth.

mpefm CHINA art fair press release
Collectors Preview:
2020, November 12, 14:00-20:00 By invitation only Last entry at 19:00
2020, November 13, 13:00-20:00 By invitation only Last entry at 19:00
Public days:
2020, November 14&15, 11:00-18:00 (Last entry at 17:00)

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