ART021 SHANGHAI 2025

Anchoring the booth is Anish Kapoor’s highly polished stainless mirror Dark Purple to Clear (2024). The colorgradient across shades of deep purple creates a lyrical oscillation of colour that further emphasises or distorts theformal structure of the object and its reflection. Over the decades, Kapoor’s mirror sculptures have becomeincreasingly painterly, embodying in them the artist’s own journey exploring the potential of painting throughmultiple mediums.

Laure Prouvost presents a pair of handblown Murano glass birds. Human, avian, and aquatic forms gracefullyintertwine, symbolising the interconnectedness and mutual reliance of species in the age of climate change andglobal migration. Rendered in different poses, they appear on the brink of transformation as if embarking on amigratory journey. Further sculptural highlights include Stack (2018) by Tony Cragg, a columnar work evoking afascinating correspondence between a carved object and an eroded rocky landscape; cast glass objects by LeikoIkemura, where luminosity and colour radiate both through and from the works’ surfaces; and Assorted Icons(2022) by Elaine Cameron-Weir, which incorporate materials repurposed from their various functions, such aslight bulbs, electrical components, alabaster and silk gauze, formalising the porous entanglement between theknown and unknown.

The booth also features Untitled Painting (1.30.24) (2024) by Oliver Lee Jackson, an energetic field of abstractmarks that open up spaces for encounters with seen and unseen worlds. Swathes of abstract gesture and boldcolouration pulls the pictorial plane beyond mere image, into zones of feeling, expression and intent. Jackson alsobrings each composition into a state of balance and harmony, controlling each section of the work and moving theeye across his passages of oil, enamel and chalk. Zhao Gang presents a large-scale painting Last Night’s Party(2025). His participation coincides with his three-part show The Basterd Gentry in Shanghai, where Act One &Two take place at Lisson Shanghai and ASE Foundation respectively, and Act Three – an artist talk – at the BundArt Center.

In The Shadow of Katyusha (2025), Li Ran reflects on the modern Chinese history in the 1950s, a significantperiod of transformation and progress, through two caricature-like figures clinging to each other’s shadow forsupport. The plant Katyusha at the bottom right of the canvas symbolises hope and aspiration, alluding to therational scrutiny and emotional desolation these characters rely on in their quest of a shared path forward. Incontrast, Julian Opie’s portraits capture faces seen in fleeting moments using simplistic yet distinctive visuallanguage with universal elements, be it a hat or a cape depicted in the two Town head. paintings, interpreting theinitial impressions on specific social groups or stereotyped professions.

Further painting highlights include First Summer (2023) by Christopher Le Brun, a luminous oil on canvasinspired by the awareness of the change in seasons, capturing the effects of natural light. His lyrical and rhythmicgesture reveals subtle shifts in colour, along with a sense of time passing. Countering to Le Brun’s perceptiveapproach to depicting light, Hiroshi Sugimoto devices his own prism apparatus to refract the beam of light andexpand each color into further variations. The resulting Opticks series documents changes in color that areimperceptible to the human eye, blurring the boundary between photography and painting.