Galerie Urs Meile will focus on a selection of new works by emerging and established artists. Among others, our presentation will include works by Anatoly Shuravlev, Chen Fei, Hu Qingyan, Julia Steiner, Not Vital and Xie Nanxing. Please find below detailed information about some works which we will present at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016:
Cheng Ran’s (*1981 in Inner Mongolia, China), brand-new video work The Homing Pigeon (2016) will be presented at our booth. As an essential part of a multi-video installation Diary of A Madman that debuts at the New Museum in New York this October, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, the work attempts to capture the spirit of the New York City through integrating iconic images of Times Square focalizing on homing pigeons as the foreground, with an excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s famed poem, the Howl, voice covered by the artist himself.
Tobias Rehberger (*1966 in Esslingen, Germany) regularly straddles the lines between the realms of painting, sculpture, design, architecture and conceptual art, shaping a body of work that is as dynamic as it is celebrated. Fall (2014) is made from paper as part of the artist’s first production in China. Rehberg- er strategically positioned the sculpture in front of a geometric watercolor pattern. As the viewer moves in front of the work, the object, also spatially removed from the painted backdrop, fades in and out of visibility as it blends into its surroundings, thus nearly negating the work’s initial visual complexity.
Lollipop series (2015) could be regarded as the first series that Li Gang (*1986 in Dali, Yunnan Province, China) deploys with human’s hair and gypsum plasters. He referred to Chinese traditional wall construction methods to produce the work. Hair and gypsum plaster mixed to form a hard composite material, and the two materials combine not only to better shape the work, but more importantly, the strangers’ hair acts as a kind of metaphor for identity that is hidden within the work. A sharpened rebar goes through the work, delivering the feeling of pain, destroying the harmony that the plaster sculpture presents, while making a triangle composition to avoid the instability as a whole. It is sabotage but at the same time, sustainable.
Watermelon Landmine (2016) is from the latest series by Wang Xingwei (*1969 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China), in which he used exaggeration and a fictional theme of 'Ridiculous World-War II Anti-Japanese Resistance Stories' that feature vivid description and pictures of negative images like 'Japanese Devils', Chinese traitors, etc. In this painting, the 'Japanese Devil' is holding a 'watermelon' with the big smile on his face. Wang Xingwei is interested in such a bizarre and vulgar scene, but at the same time, he is focusing on the research of the shape and volume as well as the sense of the painting in general.
Kabinett
Yang Mushi (*1989 in Shangrao, Jiangxi Province, China), who graduated in 2014 from the Sculpture Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, works mainly with industrial raw materials such as processed wood, foam and metal. By shaping those materials into sculptural forms, he converts the ordinary material into something violent, fragile and sharp.
Under the title Sharpening, Yang Mushi shows three sculptures from the same series of works respectively named as Sharpening – Branch (2016, wood and black spray lacquer, 35 x 80 x 25 cm), Sharpening – Cube (2016, wood and black spray lacquer, 150 x 100 x 16 cm) and Sharpening – Stick (2016, wood and black spray lacquer, 180 x 110 x 55.5 cm). He works on a massive amount of wood pieces in similar size and makes the further cutting and polishing. Through repetitive and long working process, the basic shapes of wood pieces, namely branch, cube and stick, are sharpened to different extents, into their frigidity and stiffness of forms. The artist then places each single dangerous, attacking and weapon-like objects together, to realize a special 'landscape'. 'Sharpening' corresponds to the artist’s perception of individuals living in the contemporary society.
Yang Mushi’s works reflect the problems emerging along with the extreme urban development of China in the context of globalization, as well as the oppression and crisis confronted by individuals in the rapidly changing society.
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
First Choice (by invitation only)
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
11am to 4pm
Preview (by invitation only)
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
4pm to 8pm
Vernissage (by invitation only)
Thursday, December 1, 2016
11am to 3pm
Public daysThursday, December 1, 2016
3pm to 8pm
Friday, December 2, 2016
12 noon to 8pm
Saturday, December 3, 2016
12 noon to 8pm
Sunday, December 4, 2016
12 noon to 6pm