'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
de Sarthe Gallery was founded in 1977 in Paris, later establishing galleries in America and most recently in Hong Kong and Beijing. It represents and exhibits a diverse spectrum of international artists, from important French Impressionists to Asian and Western modern and Post-War masters to a generation of emerging Chinese artists. de Sarthe Gallery offers a selection of paintings and sculptures by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Bernar Venet, and Chen Zhen as well as contemporary figures Wang Guofeng, Lin Jingjing and Zhou Wendou amongst others. de Sarthe Gallery aims to provide the international audience with a strong series of curated group and solo shows, which is complimented by a rigorous academic programme.
'Why cover the same ground again?' Odysseus asked in The Odyssey, one of literature's most lionised tales of homecoming. His question is echoed by New York and Telluride-based artist Christopher K Ho in the presentation CX 888 at de Sarthe Gallery, which explores the complexities of departure and arrival through a Hong Kong-specific lens.As the...
Sanyu's Still Life of Flowering and Fruit Plant with a Green Ground, an oil on masonite panel dated between 1950 and 1965, presents a plant brimming with aspirations of wealth, or in the artist's case, memories of it. Painted against a rich olive backdrop, Chinese symbols of good fortune, from peaches to pomegranates, grow from branches amid green...
'The sixth edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong brought together a uniquely global mix of galleries spanning six continents, outstanding artworks by established and new artists from across theworld and a singular gathering of international collectors and institutions.' –Art Basel in Hong Kong (29–31 March 2018).
Once again, the Hong Kong art machine is gearing up for Art Basel in Hong Kong (29–31 March 2018), now in its sixth edition. With surrounding art fairs like Art Central (27 March–1 April) opening alongside the main event, and an ever-expanding list of exhibitions and happenings taking place, here is a selection of things to see during the...
Three decades after Andy Warhol's death, he remains one of America's most provocative artists. His influence on popular culture is so pervasive that each emerging art movement after him has had to grapple with Warhol's focus on surface perfections and his singular celebrity. Despite their complicated feelings, many contemporary artists say they...
The stark white room is punctuated by abstract black forms — jagged, organic, dramatic and playful — that sprout up from the floor or dangle languidly from the ceiling. Glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, they shift ever so slightly as you walk down the long gallery space, a former bank building. Around each corner, a new...
'My goal is to free sculpture from the constraints of composition and to criticize the utopian principle of an ideal order,' says Bernar Venet, 77, whose Indeterminate Lines, Arcs, Angles, Diagonals and Straight Lines sculptures fashioned from manipulated raw metal beams and based on concepts of order, disorder, instability and uncertainty have...
The colourful, kaleidoscopic patterns that fill the two canvases at the entrance of de Sarthe Gallery appear inscrutable at first glance. They can be a mass of thin tubes, a route map or even a maze. When one takes a few steps back, however, one can perhaps discern views of the titular sites in Hong Kong Central and HSBC (both 2018).In a way, the...
The notion of 'Britishness' has long been underpinned by a tangle of contradictions; evocative of both the aristocratic establishment, and its countercultural underside.
View the making of ADHD, artist Zhou Wendou's new work for his forthcoming exhibition at de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong.The presentation titled ADHD, after the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a strong single piece installation. In the context of this psychological analogy, the artist along with a psychologist will host...