TOKYO GENDAI 2023

Following his involvement with the Stars Group in the 1980s, China’s first contemporary art movement, ZhaoGang (b. Beijing, China 1961) left China at 19 years old to study in Europe, and eventually settled in NewYork where he lived for two decades. Returning to his home, Beijing, in 2007, the artist found the strange sheen of a new China. As one of the most importantfigures of Chinese contemporary painting, ChineseAmerican artist Zhao is an artist with roots in boththe East and the West, who is perhaps best definedby his displacement within both history, and itsinherited aesthetics (both revolutionary, Chinese, orcontemporary) are as much the subjects of his worksas painting, or his commentary on it, itself. May2020, Zhao Gang’s first solo museum show in Taiwan with ‘Zhao Gang 21st : Supports/ColorLumps as Anthropography of History’ at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, which took a critical stance towards contemporary art history. His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Historical Painting’ at Pérez Art Museum, Miami in 2019 and two solo exhibitions in Long Museum in 2021 and 2022.

Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1983,Yuasa Eboshi graduated from ToyoUniversity’s Faculty of Economics in2005 and the Painting Department ofToyo Institute of Art and Design in2008. After the bankruptcy of thecompany, he worked for aftergraduating from university, he decidedto become a painter. Since around 34,he has been expressing himself in thesetting of ‘Yuasa Eboshi, a fictional third-rate painter born in the Taisho era, Japan,’ with surrealistinfluences in his fictional biography and meticulous settings. Recent exhibitions include ‘VOCA 2022:Prospects of Contemporary Art - Artists of the New Plane’ (The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, 2022),‘Takamatsu Contemporary Art Annual vol. 10’ (Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, 2022), ‘Modesof Fantasy: Madness in Decoration or Surrealism’ (The Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo,2022), and ‘VOCA 2022: The Art of the New Plane’ (The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo,2022). (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022), ‘still life’ (Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, 2021),and others. His major awards include the 10th Koji Kinutani Award (2018).”

Antone Könst (b. New Haven, Connecticut 1987) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Hegraduated from The California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2011 and received his MFA from theYale School of Art, New Haven in 2014. The New York-based artist uses painting, sculpture, and glyphictablets to depict experiences in light, and the latent potential within everyday moments, with deep roots inmodern art history and a passion for oriental philosophy. These works of mythic and folk images come torepresent the power found in quotidian rituals. Through recollections of daily walks in a park, a ballad to themoon, or odes to faith, Könst shares with us the aspects of the banal that are in fact the most captivating.Könst seems to imply that flowers are life and death itself, and contrast to former beliefs about evolution, allis not war in nature, not simply survival of the fittest, but principled on symbiosis, companionability, aconfraternity of softness. In 2018, Könst received the Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship. Hereceived the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2017 and the Fondation des Etats-UnisFellowship. Paris, France in 2014. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include ‘Cuttings’ at MarianneBoesky Gallery, NY (2022); ‘Dear Future’ at Marianne Boesky Gallery; Aspen, CO (2021); ‘Love Dove’,Public Art Commission, Lighthouse Works, Fishers Island, NY (2020); ‘SIRENS’ (2022) and ‘Casual Magic’(2020) at Each Modern, Taipei, Taiwan. His work can be found in the collections of X Museum, Beijing,China and George Perez Collection, FL, USA.

Tseng ChienYing’s (b. Nantou, Taiwan 1987) works, like his beatific posed figurative paintings done intraditional mineral pigments and ink, condense pseudo-classical elements to create characters or fables thatappear contemporary; like in a buddha’s hand, a cloudy spirit, or a Janus-faced totem. In his paintings,swirling patches of colors, which lean into a near blooming abstraction, might be read as symbolic landscapebackdrop for these contemporary figures’ quixotic and telling expressions. By using materials and motifsunmistakably tied to traditional Chinese and religious painting to present his subjects, pulled from Tseng’ssubjective experiences or imagination, these creatures and personalities are rendered within a culturalaesthetic that echoes in the artist’s present. Tseng ChienYing’s unique practice has attracted collectors frombackgrounds as varied as his aesthetic vocabulary, such as collectors of antiques, traditional painting as wellas keen collectors of contemporary art. His sculptural works were also exhibited as part of Each Modern’sgroup show ‘New Relics I : Crossing Over’ which presented sculpture from dynamic contemporary artistswith priceless works from Chinese antiquity, drawing contrast and comparison through these disparatemoments in time. In 2017, Tseng was granted the Asian Cultural Council fellowship. In 2022, Tseng’s firstsolo with Each Modern ‘SKIN DEPTH’ was nominated by TaiShin Art Award.