ART SG 2025

A series of new works by Vietnamese artist Lêna Bùi (b. 1985, Danang, Vietnam) will be presented, which marks the first collaboration between Galerie Urs Meile and Lêna Bùi. Her works are both amusing anecdotes and in-depth articulations of the impact of rapid development on people’s relationship with nature and their surroundings. She reflects on ways that intangible aspects of life, such as faith, death and dreams, influence behaviour and perception. Her work responds to the fragmented nature of modern life and the sensing of a certain void, while trying to express a worldview that is not entirely human-centric.

Cao Yu’s (b. 1988, Liaoning, China) works span a diverse range of media that include video, installation, performance, photography, sculpture and painting. She is famous for her incisive and bold artistic language, distinctive cross-disciplinary practice, witty and ironic expression. Her artistic exploration involves complex issues such as gender identity, survival status, major historical events, humanity, interpersonal relationships, etc.

Chen Sixin (b. 1995, Guangdong, China) focuses on posthumanism, combining the surrealist elements of old comics and cult films. His images depict visions of ecology (the environment), extraterres- trial life and the end times. Each work does not have a specific motivation, but random reactions and scattered ideas often enter the picture without being realized. There is a certain surrealistic fantasy of romanticism in his paintings. Chen Sixin’s first solo exhibition with Galerie Urs Meile was held at the gallery’s Beijing branch in the autumn.

Most of Chen Zuo’s (b. 1990, Hunan, China) paintings are filled with perceptions from individual experience, the feel of abrasion under intense conflict, and the order that lies beneath the surface of resistance. They appear expressive and romantic, but are also entangled with reflection and concern about their surroundings. Chen Zuo has consistently been trying to use the medium of painting to mend the ruptures in reality. Chen Zuo’s latest solo exhibition was held at Galerie Urs Meile Zurich this winter.

Hu Qingyan (b. 1982, Shandong, China) has continued to explore form, medium, and represen- tation over the years. Hu chooses marble—a mostly neutral and cold material—as a medium to transform and reproduce the original proportions of surrounding objects. Like a craftsman, the artist tirelessly imitates and effortlessly transforms the world, nimbly recreating ordinary things so that they may be examined and observed anew. These minimalist and modest stone objects are not only an expression of individual emotion, but also an observation and introspection of a communal nature.

Ju Ting (b. 1983, Shandong, China) draws on her extensive knowledge of materials and techniques, gained through her printmaking background, to create a body of work characterized by coalescing two conventional art media: painting and sculpture, and obscuring the boundary between the two. Applying layer upon layer of acrylic paint over a wood panel, she builds them up to a certain thickness, at which point she determines differing means of manipulating the layers of colors. Despite the potentially cold and industrial feel of acrylic, Ju’s handling of the medium is deeply personal. Employing knife as brush, she fosters a poetic and tangible connection between the artwork and the body. What truly distinguishes

Miao Miao’s (b. 1986, Henan, China) work is her bold and distinctive approach, challenging the boundaries of conventional norms and entrenched visual traditions. This sets her apart from the more conventional academic training paths commonly pursued in China. Her works revolve around everyday life from both within and without, obsessing and roaming between colour and shape, mixed in with literary aspects, in an attempt to reach clarity in the depiction of chaos. Miao realizes her current explorations in painting, presenting the mass of confrontations she faces with the externalities of everyday life.

Xie Nanxing (b. Chongqing, China) is fascinated by the randomness of life, and his reflective nature allows him to navigate this randomness with agility and versatility. His recent paintings not only capture significant milestones in his life but also showcase his unique approach to the art of painting. The interplay of the elements of life with personal desire forms the driving force behind Xie Nanxing’s creation of his visual structures, where the concept of an ‘organism’ provides a thread of remarkable consistency to his enduring and impressive artistic endeavors. His paintings leave a wide open field for the viewer. The freedom offered by his paintings is often disconcerting and compels the viewer to linger.

Xie Nanxing’s latest solo exhibition was held at Galerie Urs Meile Beijing this winter. Regarded as one of China’s most mature and far-reaching contemporary painters, Wang Xingwei’s (b. 1969, Shenyang, China) irreverent appropriation of visual references from both Chinese and Western art history has consistently been a topic in his work since the beginning of his career. His practice has always centered around ‘thematic paintings’. While paying attention to personal experience and mundanity, the artist integrates individual feelings with the collective memory of our time through an absurd, yet mischievous altitude, injecting an alluring surreal nature into an everyday life that one is accustomed to with his quirky and witty perception. Furthermore, his works harmoniously transform and fuse the individual with the community, and history with the present.

Film: Cai Dongdong

****Cai Dongdong’s (b. 1978, Gansu, China) film History of Life (2023, Single channel video, color/ silent, 42’41”) will be presented at the Film Sector. As an artist who takes photography and installation as his major creative media, re-creating based on ready-made photographs has always been Cai Dongdong’s main approach. By manipulating the photographs in various ways—curling, sanding, transplanting, scraping, tearing, burning—to discover a certain ‘dramatic structure’ behind the rigid images and to give them a new vitality. Cai Dongdong’s works are free from the burden of history, light in technique but serious in gesture.

The images in this video were selected from a pool of nearly 600,000 images depicting the lives of ordinary Chinese people. The time span of these selected photographs is almost a century. While compiling them, the artist discovered that these images could not be separated from the course of history. In the twentieth century, Chinese society experienced a massive historical change. The appearance and circumstances of people from different eras have been influenced by the ideology of their times. The film follows the birth and growth of three generations as its narrative thread, with these images becoming the vessel that carries the memories of the Chinese people, while memory is the only way to construct life.