Venue | Messe Basel (Messeplatz 10, 4058 Basel, Switzerland)
Kabinett Booth | E13
Participating Artists | Yang Mao-Lin (b. 1953), Ava Hsueh (b. 1956), Yuan Hui-Li (b. 1963), Yao Jui-Chung (b. 1969), Peng Wei (b. 1974), Su Meng-Hung (b. 1976), Chen Ching-Yuan (b. 1984)
Opening Hours |
Unlimited Opening
06.16 (Mon.) 4:00-8:00 p.m.
VIP Preview
06.17 (Tue.), 06.18 (Wed.) 11:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Vernissage
06.18 (Wed.) 4:00-8:00 p.m.
Unlimited Vernissage
06.19 (Thurs.) 7:00-10:00 p.m.
Public Days
06.19 (Thurs.) -06.22 (Sun.) 11:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Tina Keng Gallery in Kabinett |
"Duobaoge: East and West in Reflection"
Continuing the theme of Tina Keng Gallery’s booth in the Galleries sector — which spans from early 20th-century modernism to contemporary Eastern abstract art exploration — the gallery further extends its curatorial focus through the Kabinett sector. Drawing on the concept of the duobaoge, or cabinet of curiosities, the gallery presents contemporary artistic explorations by various artists who have inherited and deconstructed traditional Eastern cultural codes. This guides the viewer into different dimensions woven from traditional Eastern aesthetics and contemporary artistic thinking, providing Western audiences with a multifaceted context of contemporary Asian art.
The duobaoge originates from ancient Chinese imperial chambers used for storing and displaying art collections. Utilizing national resources for extensive research, cataloging, and classification, it not only showcased the collector’s eclectic taste spanning ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign works, but served as a precursor to modern Eastern museums. In a chamber resembling a treasure room, elegant spatial layers are formed using openwork partition shelves of varying sizes. Different types of artworks are placed in openwork frames of unequal horizontal and vertical dimensions, at varying heights. This constructs a viewing perspective imbued with Eastern philosophy, and fosters connections between works, conjuring a continuum of past and present that evokes a treasure hunt. Through this presentation, Tina Keng Gallery reconfigures traditional Eastern aesthetics into a visual discourse that transcends time and space, guiding the viewer into a cultural journey where the trajectories of history and geography — ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western — intersect.
This presentation brings together contemporary works by Yao Jui-Chung (b. 1969) and Peng Wei (b. 1974), whose narrative paintings intertwine elements of Eastern traditional culture with contemporary issues. Works by Ava Hsueh (b. 1956) and Yuan Hui-Li (b. 1963) explore the dynamism of calligraphic strokes and the textural techniques of ink painting, reinterpreted through a contemporary lens. Su Meng-Hung (b. 1976) and Yang Mao-Lin (b. 1953) refine historical symbols, staging a dialogue between traditional Chinese lacquer art or sculpture and the aesthetics of contemporary consumer culture. This progression culminates in the work of Chen Ching-Yuan (b. 1984), whose paintings capture a nuanced, shared sensibility drawn from literature, history, and mythology across cultures — forming a visual constellation that, while seemingly fragmented and non-linear, resonates closely with the human condition.
This year’s Kabinett sector, nestled within a partitioned chamber of the Tina Keng Gallery booth, engages in quiet dialogue with the overarching theme of the Galleries sector outside. Like stepping into a Taiji diagram, the space unfolds across multiple layers — exterior and interior, yin and yang, legacy and the contemporary — inviting the viewer into a multidimensional narrative.
By revisiting the juncture where Western contemporary art and Eastern traditions first converged, the presentation seeks to highlight how contemporary artists carry forward, dismantle, and rearticulate historic Eastern cultural symbols. In this treasure room-like chamber, viewers from diverse cultural backgrounds are guided through a map of artistic expressions — each traversing Eastern and Western philosophies — that bridges ancestral wisdom and the contemporary. In doing so, the presentation charts new pathways for cross-cultural exchange between East and West.