Pace Gallery is delighted to announce its first participation of 2014 ART 021 Contemporary Art Fair running from November 12 to 16 at ROCKBUND Shanghai. At Booth 2-02, Pace Gallery will present over 30 works from more than ten contemporary Asian and Western artists.
In this year’s ART 021, Pace will focus on duel themes of the photography’s aura and the aesthetics of daily goods. For photography, we chose six iconic works by the international renowed master Hiroshi Sugimoto, who is exhibiting in the upcoming show at Pace London, as well as one of the most important artists known as the pioneer of performance art in China, Song Dong and his photography work. In aesthetics of daily goods, the presentation will be a selection of various works by renowned artists including Robert Irwin, Tara Donovan, Liu Jianhua, Li Songsong, Mao Yan, and Yin Xiuzhen, to name a few.
In the Photography Display section, two artists’ explorations of photography each reveals a direction, dedicating to the homage to natural harmony and human behavior respectively :
Hiroshi Sugimoto (b.1948- ) is known as "the last modernist". His photography works have received numerous praises and awards. The artist who introduces eastern and western history, philosophy and aesthetics into photography will present his best-known Seascapes and Lighting Fields series. For the Seascapes Sugimoto once said: "I take photos of the history of things. In the Seascapes series, the objects I have to deal with are water and air, and these two have changed merely so far to us humans. All the other things on earth change with the passing of time. The theme of my art is time.”
Song Dong (b.1966- ) is one of the most important performance artists in China. The subject "water" in the context of his work has always been a crucial carrier and clue among others. Pace Gallery will present photography Writing Time with Water Sydney of his Water Writing series. According to Song Dong, “Water is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and unshaped material. It is one of the sources of life, and is also one of the destruction objects. The solid, liquid and gas existences of water bring poetic temperament to it, and when I use water to write diary, it became an important carrier of my spiritual life."
In the Dailiness and Modernity section, seven Chinese and foreign artists are brought together to present a living show with the usage and maneuver of daily objects, by virtue of a fine sense of form as well as conceptual abstraction, mobilizing the human beings, animals, goods and materials into enchanted artifact which intrigues audience’s gaze and thinking.
Li Songsong (b.1973- ) will have his solo exhibition on November 28 at Pace Hong Kong. His works are created on the basis of old photos suggesting major political or historical events still resonant in people’s memory around the world. The piece Atlas of Pig's Lymphatic System was created in impasto to visualize the invisible interior of an animal, and is a rare work in his oeuvre.
Liu Jianhua (b.1962- ) is having a solo exhibition entitled Square at Pace Beijing till November 22. As a unique artist in China who embodies contemporary spirit and modern aesthetic in ceramic develops,Liu Jianhua has been working around this medium. Three set of Square(year of creation) and three size-varied Blank Paper(year of creation) have been brought to the booth, as well as a set of Trace(year of creation) which was installed at the Ullens Centr for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Moreover, a medium-size installation of Fallen Leaves, which was elected to Germany public installation projects will be displayed at public area of the fair.
Mao Yan (b.1968- ) whose solo exhibition will be held at Pace New York in 2015 is a representative figure of China’s New Realism. Li Xianting said that Mao Yan “portrays portraits of the era with fading expressions", and to the artist, his works do not discuss the meaning of "portraits", rather, they are about the meaning of "portrait paintings", which is to borrow human silhouettes and motions for the materialization of lines, colors and compositions. Fish Head to Goya at Pace Gallery Booth showcases Mao Yan’s distinguished personal painting style in the response to western art master Goya’s work, and is also a seldom “portrait”of everyday food painted by the artist.
Robert Irwin (b. 1928- ) will bring to the fair an installation of light tube. A vanguard of light and space movement in LA in the 1960s, Irwin thinks that artists should focus on how to dialogue with the surrounding environment through their arts. As the first installation artist won the famous Mac Arthur Award (also known as“the genius prize”), Irwin works with common objects, the everyday tubes, to create minimal installations that are simple in composition, but deliver multi-layered colors visually.
Yin Xiuzhen (b.1963- ) is the most famous contemporary female artist in China. She has been working with second-hand clothing as the main material, and in her point of view, second-hand clothes are the material with temperature as well as the second skin of their users carrying emotions and stories. Yin Xiuzhen has been consciously collecting second-hand clothes with her touch of sensitivity, and with her delicate craft, second-hand clothes became meaningful installations. Her works That is Wrong No. 7, the often-exhibit Bookshelf series and Unbearable Warmth will be shown at the fair, and particularly for the last piece, it will be seen at public area of ART 021.
Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959- )’s Putting out a small tongue is the artist’s first bronze sculpture attempt with Pace Gallery, and is a major work that far differs from his light-sweet style. The artist states that“loneliness and alienation are the impulsion of my creation”, and the cool and naughty girls he created have been loved by almost everyone. This bronze sculpture known as “the work that broke through the artist’s original image and led him to another peak”uses the same girl image from his works on paper technically, and combined with rough hand-work texture that expands the viewers’ imagination.
Zhang Huan (b.1965- ) will present two works Premature Poppy Field No. 15 and Poppy Field_No. 21. As the most important, most influential and most active contemporary artist of today, Zhang Huan returned home after spending some of his early years in New York, and converted to a Buddhist focusing in art practice. His latest Poppy Field series was inspired by his frequent reciprocation to Tibet, Nepal and India known as the Buddhist shrines. This so called series that“lightening the illusion of Tibetan ceremony”by New York Times is a new series distinct from his previous gigantic Three Heads and Six Arms sculpture and large-scale ash paintings. According to Zhang Huan, these works “express people’s illusions about happiness, fear and loneliness in the life and beyond”.
In particular, Pace Gallery is also bringing the American female artist Tara Donovan (b.1969 )’s ink on paper works. Tara Donovan is skillful in discovering the nature of ordinary daily materials and making them into, for example, sculptures or paintings made from foam plastic cups. Creation is an infinite extension of materials for her.
Artist List:
Tara Donovan
Robert Irwin
Li Songsong
Liu Jianhua
Mao Yan
Yoshitomo Nara
Song Dong
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Yin Xiuzhen
Zhang Huan