Tang Contemporary Art is excited to present works by an international roster of artists on the theme 'Reinvigoration'. Showing motives of portraiture, classical imagery, and traditional iconography, these works will explore how contemporary artists interact with and appropriate longstanding cultures throughout human history.
As one of the world's most critical artists, Ai Weiwei (b.1957) endeavours not just to spread Chinese culture across the globe, but appropriate it to express modern, reflective ideas. A zodiac sign can be mythical and symbolic from Chinese tales, but can also be down-to-earth and playful as presented with lego as a medium. Also exploring the development of Chinese history, Mao Xuhui (b.1956) focuses on the governing body's authoritative and straining measures. The 'scissor', throughout his 60 years of artistic careers, marks as his most representative symbolism. What is seen ordinary and long-established, to Mao, can also be an object subjected to metaphysics, taking on abstract forms, colours, lines, and planes to signify critical perspectives. Chinese master Tan Ping (b.1960) questions about abstraction as well. In fact, his 40 years of painting career revolves around the interrogation of traditional painting fundamentals. Is painting a point, a line, a plane, or a symphony of the three? Is it form or concept, process or result? All of which are questions that constitute his artistic philosophy beyond realism. Pang Maokun (b.1963), on the other hand, appropriates traditionalism in terms of the figurative and on a more personal, intimate level. Family members or friends of the artist, while rendered in a seemingly established style of mimetic oil painting, are also illuminated through post-modern methods. Visual mechanisms, in particular, is Pang's latest enthusiasm. By distorting perspectives and directions of looking, he explores modern concepts about the relationship between the viewer and the art.
Contemporary Chinese artists are often also interested in reviving the Western classical. Since the 1970s, Chen Danqing (b.1953) has been revolutionary in innovating the genre of realistic portraiture in China, and is continuing to do so lately with Western subjects. Royal aristocrats are reimagined as modern individuals; while classical painters like Picasso and Matisse are appropriated as histories to be revisited. Contrarily, despite having a similar background to Chen as a Chinese avant-garde since the 1970s, Zhu Jinshi (b.1954) has developed a style of abstraction instead. He revitalises the classical by developing from the twentieth German Expressionism. Using thick, bold brushstrokes of oil paint, the common representation is replaced by how the world 'visually feels'. From natural scenery to everyday objects, they become colour blocks that reflect sentiments.
How do Southeast Asian artists and international artists view these longstanding cultures then? Filipino artist Jigger Cruz (b. 1984) appropriates classical paintings directly to destruction. Familiar images are covered with gestural and thick oil paint, as if becoming victims of vandalisation. Yet, Cruz's attention is not on what has been removed, but on how our perception can be changed when viewing the past. Korean artist Chun Kwang Young (b.1944) tackles this transformation of the past even more directly. By crafting Korean mulberry paper into crystal-like sculptures, Chun is simultaneously breaking down the written texts on the paper and reforming them into a part of these metamorphic, living entities. The past is thus revived and reendowed with new meanings. German artist Jonas Burgert (b.1969) presents a similar view. With his most renowned style of mythologised and exotic figures, different cultures seem to have interweaved and integrated into their clothing and ornaments. The old and the established are hence fluid and changeable, reflective of each individual's feelings and experience.
This selection of artworks brings together how artists of different generations and nationalities perceive and respond to the concept of culture. The past and the classic can hence be reinvigorated and re-presented in contemporary means, further enriching what has already been established.