Pearl Lam Galleries will present a selection of Chinese abstract artworks at Art Basel in Hong Kong, spanning from the 1980s to the present by renowned Chinese contemporary artists Li Huasheng, Qin Yufen, Qiu Deshu, Su Xiaobai, Juju Sun, Yan Binghui, Zhang Jianjun, and Zhu Jinshi, all pioneers in the Chinese abstract movement. Their work is featured alongside American artists Jenny Holzer and Michael Chow aka Zhou Yinghua ~O-O~. For the first time, the Galleries will also participate in the Encounters sector of the show with a 10m wide installation by Hong Kong artist Morgan Wong, who questions Hong Kong’s relationship with China’s political regime. The stand’s curated presentation explores the development of Chinese abstract art over the past 30 years through innovative artists, many of whom led the movement to break free of realist painterly ideals prominent in the 1980s. In contrast to Western abstract expressionists, Chinese abstract artists turn inward, reinventing ancient Chinese philosophy and traditional Chinese art forms, such as calligraphy, ink brush, and landscape painting, for the twenty-first century.
While Western abstraction and minimalism are associated with a pure investigation of the medium itself, these Chinese artists intrinsically link mediums to their cultural identity. Two seemingly simple materials, ink and xuan (rice) paper, are long associated with Chinese culture going back to the invention of written language. There is a meditative quality in the works of Qin Yufen, Yan Binghui, Qiu Deshu, Zhang Jianjun and Li Hausheng, which embraces Taoist principles on the relationship between humanity and nature, and cultivation of the inner self.
In a similar return to materials associated with Chinese culture and ancient craft, Su Xioabai works with coloured lacquer in a unique way. Having studied and lived in Germany for 20 years before moving back to China, Su’s style has evolved with his exposure to China’s social realism of the 1980s and Germany’s modernism and abstract expressionism. Su’s layering technique results in exquisitely rendered shell-like finishes to sensuous, curved profiles and abraded textures in his sculptural abstract paintings.
Like Su Xiaobai, Zhu Jinshi and Qin Yufen moved to Germany in the 1980s. Their works are also influenced by their cross-cultural experiences, as seen in Zhu Jinshi’s impastoed oil paintings. Zhu invests Chinese traditions of free brush and ink painting into his works, which have been described as ‘dense tapestries of interconnected experiences’.
Juju Sun is of a younger generation of Chinese abstract artists. Living between Beijing and New York, she too is inspired by both traditional Chinese culture and modern influences. Sun possesses a strong painterly instinct and a sensibility for colours strengthened by rigorous painting approaches, her recent works combine the use of mechanical paint rollers and hand-painting.
Other stand highlights include Michael Chow aka Zhou Yinghua ~O-O~’s large-scale mixed media canvases, created using a variety of precious and household materials; and Jenny Holzer’s first four-sided LED work in Traditional Chinese, Inclined, which was created for her first solo show in Hong Kong at Pearl Lam Galleries in September 2013.
The Galleries is also pleased to present The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure), 2014, a new commission presented in the Encounters Sector by leading Hong Kong artist Morgan Wong. His work addresses the state of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy in Hong Kong, and can be seen as a silent protest against the recent attempt to introduce the controversial ‘moral and national education’ to Hong Kong’s school curriculum, which many see as Mainland interference. It consists of a 10 x 8m wall covered in tens of thousands of ‘white flags’, which are the remnants of peeled-back sheets of Mainland patriotic red flag stickers. The work also includes cushions embroidered with fifty-year calendars that mark the transition period from 1997 to 2047 from so-called self-rule to Mainland Chinese rule.
Pearl Lam Galleries will also showcase a series of new work in a solo exhibition by Su Xiaobai in the Pedder Building space, curated by leading British Curator Paul Moorhouse of the National Portrait Gallery, London. The artist will also be presenting his installation Three Hundred Leafs in The Lobby of the Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong, from 13 to 17 May.