Gordon Cheung is a London-based artist recognised for his surreal, highly tactile paintings. Drawing from both historical and contemporary epoch-making events, Cheung explores themes of identity, territory, and capitalism.
Read MoreCheung received his BFA from Central Saint Martins (1998), and his MFA from the Royal College of Art (2001) in London.
Central to Cheung's paintings are psychedelic depictions of landscapes and flowers, which often begin as an assortment of images from digital databases. The artist prints these onto a support made from pages of the Financial Times stock market listings, and adds various textures using acrylic, spray paint, or sand.
Cheung's earlier works from around 2009 and 2010 saw the artist create large-scale, allegorical vistas in the triptych format. In The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2009), the metaphorical harbingers of the end of the world are depicted as Wall Street capitalists. Their larger-than-life equestrian forms tower over the tips of the skyscrapers, warped and covered by cartoonish ghosts, in reference to the 2008 Great Recession.
A key theme in Cheung's flower paintings is the tulip mania of 17th-century Netherlands, a period which is widely believed to be the first economic bubble in history. In paintings such as Tulipmania (2012) and Admirael Gouda (Tulipbook) (2013), a single tulip casts dramatic shadows over its background of the Financial Times pages, perhaps hinting at the ongoing existence of speculative bubbles despite risk.
Flowers are also the subject of the 'Augury' series, in which vases of beautifully arranged flowers stand on a ground sculpted from sand and acrylic spray. While soft hues and intense backlighting create a glowing aurora effect around the vase, the newspaper text remains visible in the background, extending a warning on the transience of material life.
As a Britain-born Chinese person, with parents from Hong Kong, Cheung often uses landscape to explore his heritage in relation to China's modern history and government policies. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange building emerges from the horizon in Valley (2018), in which the urban landscape of Shenzhen is rendered in sand relief. While it appears monumental when compared to the rest of the metropolis, the building appears dwarfed by the surrounding landscape, an image that recurs in works such as Desert of the Real and Megalopolis (both 2020).
For Arrow to Heaven, Cheung's first solo exhibition in Paris with Almine Rech in 2022, the artist explored the Second Opium War (1856–1860), a war that eventually led to the collapse of the Qing Empire, and the modernisation of China.
Gordon Cheung has held solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Select solo exhibitions include Arrow to Heaven, Almine Rech, Paris (2022); Transfer of Power, C Project, Los Angeles (2021); Tears of Paradise, Edel Assanti, London (2020); Here Be Dragons, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Notthingham (2016).
Select group exhibitions include A Gateway to Possible Worlds, Art and Science Fiction, Centre Pompidou Metz, Lorraine (2022); NFTism: No Fear in Trying, Institut, London (2021); Liverpool Biennial (2020).
Gordon Cheung's website can be found here.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
