Press Release

Lévy Gorvy Dayan is pleased to announce the first New York exhibition with Chinese painter Tu Hongtao, opening February 22, 2024, at 19 East 64th Street. Tu Hongtao: Beyond Babel presents sweeping compositions in sumptuous hues that advance the artist’s use of abstraction as a means to engage with memory, landscape, and society, as well as art history, theory, and poetry. Introducing more than thirty new works, the exhibition unveils significant developments in Tu’s practice since his first exhibition in 2020 with the gallery in Hong Kong.

The exhibition’s title indicates a key source of inspiration for Tu’s most recent body of work. Paraphrasing the literary theorist George Steiner’s study After Babel, published in 1975, “Beyond Babel” represents our contemporary moment and our reliance on technology to communicate—at the possible expense of more distinctive forms of expression and connection. Tu has explored landscape and abstraction since the early 2010s. His paintings that will debut at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York, reveal a new commitment to storytelling as a response to current modes of artificial intelligence and data collection. The power of imagination and personal association—conceived by the artist as counterforces—are central to the conception of the works on view.

Press release courtesy Lévy Gorvy Dayan

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About the Artist

Born in Chengdu, China, in 1976, Tu Hongtao was admitted to the affiliated high school of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1991. He later graduated with a specialization in oil painting from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1999. Completing his formal education on the eve of the millennium, the artist began his career during an era of swift transformation in his country—one that signaled the end of its collective economy and the rise of the market economy and globalization.

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Also Exhibiting at Lévy Gorvy Dayan

About the Gallery

Helmed by Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, and Amalia Dayan, Lévy Gorvy Dayan collaborates with artists, estates, non-profit organizations, foundations, museums, and private collections to increase the visibility of twentieth- and twenty-first century works and artists—realizing seminal projects and furthering legacies. In forming Lévy Gorvy Dayan, the partners merge their respective specialties across twentieth- and twenty-first century art, their reputations as leaders and tastemakers, and their respective backgrounds in the primary and secondary markets. Lévy Gorvy Dayan provides opportunities for education, exposure, and access to acquiring exceptional art through its museum-quality exhibition program and thoughtful participation in international art fairs. Expanding, refining, and enhancing world-class modern and contemporary art collections, the gallery emphasizes connoisseurship and curation in its collection development, estate planning, and art appraisal services. Both international and local in practice and perspective, Lévy Gorvy Dayan has unique spaces and unmatched market knowledge in New York, London, and Hong Kong, in addition to representation in Geneva, Milan, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, and Taiwan.

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19 East 64th Street
New York
United States
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
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New York 19 East 64th Street
Lévy Gorvy Dayan
19 East 64th Street, New York, United States

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
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