ART BASEL HONG KONG 2023

Cao Yu’s (b. 1988) work spans a diverse range of media that includes video, installation, performance, photography, sculpture and painting. With her distinctive interdisciplinary practice, sharp and bold artistic language, she has become one of the leading young artists in the field of Chinese contemporary art. Her work challenges propriety and other social conventions, questions the value and identity of current Chinese society using an approach that is not only inherent but also performative, also shedding new light on relevant and timely women’s issues. In September 2022 Cao Yu participated in the international group exhibition “Empowerment” at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (GER), which gathers diverse feminist approaches whilst understanding them as progressive methods to analyse the societies of the world with the means of art. In her latest paintings she skilfully addresses socio-critical themes with a shocking directness.

A color, an object, a memory or even a feeling can become the inspiration for a new painting of Chen Zuo (b. 1990). His paintings are not only characterized by precise technique and balanced composition, but also full of emotion, well visible in his “Snowscapes”, a series he pursues since 2021. Being from the south of China and encountering cold temperatures late in life, winter has a special meaning for him and embodies a exceptional, sensual experience. Chen Zuo does not see winter as gloomy and lonely, but full of romance. The snow depicted is by no means a single white, but rich, thick, warm and full of colors, which the artist skillfully expresses through the overpainting technique of classical painting. He knows how to layer natural and translucent colors to increase the thickness of the work and create a relationship between form and color and the different layers. Chen Zuo’s first solo exhibition The Unbeatable Winter will be launched at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing on April 8.

Shao Fan (b. 1964) holds a unique position in contemporary art because he combines the artistic and cultural traditions of China with the contemporary vernacular of Western art. He uses classical ink drawing as his painting technique without tying himself down to the traditional motifs. He transfers his motifs onto monumental formats, drawing subjects from Chinese culture such as the hare or the monkey. They aim to confront the viewer with the process of decay and result in timelessness. Beginning 2020, he had a major solo exhibition at Het Noordbrabants Museum, Netherlands, and got selected for the first Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in Saudi Arabia in 2021.The delicate ink paintings of Swiss artist Rebekka Steiger (b. 1993) achieves unexpected visual results through the interplay of chance/control and intuition/safety. Steiger is an artist who embodies painting as a state of mind, determined to go with the flow without being constrained by conceptualism and overthinking. During her artist residency in Beijing, she was inspired by Japanese ink painting and the linguistic ambiguities of Chinese. Since then, she has experimented with ink, tempera and oil paint, creating unique effects due to the different textures of the materials. The fusion of shapes and colors results in a fascinating world. Her visual language suggests a progression into the unknown and sets no limits to one’s imagination. Since october 2022 Steiger is staying in Vietnam as an artist in residence.Wang Xingwei (b. 1969) often depicts scenes that are ambiguous, irrelevant, absurd, vulgar, scandalous, and laughable. His plots are often unexpected, far-fetched, and yet charmingly surreal. It is important to interpret the diverse themes of Wang Xingwei’s works, and his agile pivoting between a wide variety of painting styles, from within a wider context. His early work includes dialogues with classics of Western art history and skepticism and criticism of the local Chinese art scene. After entering the middle of his artistic career, he has gradually developed a unique style and continues the exploration of the fundamentals of painting, including conscious transmission and the repetition of images. After being based in Shanghai from 2002 to 2008, where Wang Xingwei created some of his most groundbreaking paintings; the Power Station of Art in Shanghai opened the first institutional survey focusing on this period showcasing Wang’s paintings alongside other artist peers of his time in Summer 2022.