Gade’s art represents a private, yet universal, journey of negotiation through a set of problematic binaries. One is between identities, as Chinese and as Tibetan, another between contexts, traditional and contemporary, and last but not least, between religious ideologies within a capitalist present. The artist makes pictures that document who he is and what he sees, his underlying objective being to dissolve romanticized, exoticized, and stereotyped views of his native country. In place of Buddhist deities, he paints iconography extracted from corporate America and superhero comics into thangkas and other classical Buddhist formats. Gade currently lives and works in Lhasa, and is also a lecturer at the School of Fine Arts of Tibet University.
Read MoreBFA, School of Fine Arts, Tibet University, Lhasa, Tibet, 1991
Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 1991–92
He is a founding member of the Gedun Choephel Artists’ Guild and has held solo exhibitions in New Mexico, USA; London, UK; and Hong Kong. The artist has completed residences in the United States as well as in Scotland, and has participated in exhibitions worldwide, held respectively at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain; the Art Museum at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA; the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in New York, USA; and the Songzhuang Art Center in Beijing, China.
