This exhibition took place at our previous Singapore location.
Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present Presence of Whiteness by Zhu Jinshi, its first dual-space solo exhibition since the opening of the new gallery in Dempsey Hill. Following his recent solo at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong, which featured a series of black and white paintings, Zhu Jinshi will present over 20 coloured paintings created between 2012–16 at the Dempsey Hill space. The works can be seen as a dialectic of colour as concept; in keeping with his detached from colour series of paintings, here colour is transformed into enriched bodily forms traversing between whiteness and colour-filled three-dimensional space on canvas. Meanwhile, the Gillman Barracks gallery will feature works consisting of painting, installation, and text that span a fifty-year period, delineating a personal history of persistence and destruction as well as attachment and reflection.When 'white' returns to an object through the medium of paint, then 'white' should all the more be an 'object' instead of a painting. —Zhu Jinshi
'Whiteness' signifies not only a minimalist reduction to its extreme, the blank canvas, but also carries with its emptiness the potency of the inner mind. The collision and conflict of these two roles is both an intersection of cultural language and syntax, and a vivid embodiment of every decision the artist makes when confronting a blank canvas, colour, and paint. Zhu prefers to convey colour three-dimensionally through thick applications of paint; he embraces the splendidness of colour through its materiality, facing directly the challenge and surprise of paint. For him, paint embodies time, while the presence of whiteness is where time freezes. Using a custom-made palette knife, he pulls and pushes, flips and shovels—bodily movements that are exercised above the canvas. Where to fill, where to empty, where to collapse, where to fall, where to determine, and where to hesitate construct the presence of whiteness in the painting, composed of revolutionary moments of action. In this three-dimensional space, the white paint grows fearlessly within different levels; whereas colour and paint either expands; overlaps; or hides in crevices, edges, or cracks. In the end, paint becomes a game played out by a materialised body and an escalating vision.
Zhu Jinshi’s painting is not to be viewed in stillness, neither is it aesthetic ecstasy achieved by the medium of paint. The subject is not immersed in the work, but is instead made to stand out; these works are a result of metaphysical transformation and a fermentation of the artist’s action as it relates to a quintessential subject that marches forward on an elusive path full of obstacles and doubts. The landscape on the canvas imitates the ascending and descending altitude; the river of paint rumbles Mother Earth to her astonishment, letting the falling particles and mass sediment float or rush to the summit of the forest, fall into the valley of a mountain, soar on top of the wave, hang in the middle of a cliff, such as in Western Hills and Such a Master. Calligraphy inadvertently returns and winds on the canvas surface; the argument with tradition vanishes in the writing with paint, leaving monochromatic calligraphic traces. Non-calligraphy does not indicate anti-calligraphy, but instead materialises the sentiment of calligraphy. Consequently, destruction arrives and holds the subconscious hostage, relentlessly cutting off the flow of writing without any hesitation, such as in Sidaokou (Four-Way Intersection). During the metamorphosis of the subject, time breaks for the halt of paint, space ends where emptiness is revealed, and the absence of paint is also the revelation of paint.
About Zhu Jinshi
Born in Beijing, China in 1954, Zhu Jinshi is a pioneer of Chinese abstract art and installation art. Zhu began painting abstract works in the late 1970s and moved to Berlin in 1986, splitting his time between Berlin and Beijing since 1994 before settling in Beijing in 2010.
Zhu’s solo exhibitions include Detached from Colour (2016), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong; Zhu Jinshi (2016), Yuan Art Museum, Beijing, China; Zhu Jinshi (2016), Blum & Poe, New York, New York, USA; Performance in Paint: Zhu Jinshi (2015–16), Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China; Zhu Jinshi: Boat, a Yi Pai installation (2015), organised by Pearl Lam Galleries and Hongkong Land at Exchange Square, Hong Kong, China; Zhu Jinshi: Simplicity (2014), Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore; Zhu Jinshi: The Reality of Paint (2013), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong; Zhu Jinshi (2012), Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, USA; Power and Territory (2008), Arario Gallery, Beijing, China; and Fang (1990), DAAD gallery, Berlin, Germany. Group shows include Black (2016), Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, California, USA; Perfection by Chance—A Yi Pai Series Exhibition (2015), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China; Thick Paint: Jean Fautrier, Franz West, Zhu Jinshi (2014), Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York, USA; 28 Chinese (2013–14), The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Orient/Ation, 4th International Istanbul Biennial in Turkey (1995), Istanbul, Turkey; and the 1st Xing Xing (Stars Group) Exhibition (1979), Gallery in Beihai Park, Beijing, China. His works have been collected internationally by notable public and private collections, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA; Brooklyn Museum, USA; Busan Museum of Art, Korea; Delphine Arnault, France; Deutsche Bank, Germany; Mario Testino, UK; The Rubell Family Collection, USA; Guangdong Museum of Art, China; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and White Rabbit Collection, Australia.
Press release courtesy Pearl Lam Galleries.
14A Dempsey Road
Dempsey Hill
Singapore, 249669
The gallery is temporarily closed until further notice.