With its years-long dedication to promoting Greater Chinese art, the Tina Keng Gallery seeks in the flux of time an aesthetics that is steeped in tradition and history. We are pleased to announce our participation in the 2016 edition of ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, showcasing an eclectic array of artists, including Sanyu (1901-1966), Wang Huaiqing (b. 1944), Su Xiaobai (b.1949), Peng Wei (b. 1974), Su Meng-hung (b. 1976), and Hou I-ting (b. 1979). These six artists together epitomize the spectrum of Greater Chinese modern and contemporary art.
Sanyu’s early watercolors of ladies mark an important trend in Chinese modernism, which was profoundly influenced by the Western thought. Living in Paris in the 20s, Sanyu (1901-1966) cultivated a body of work with a vivid silhouette and a palette tinged with Expressionism. The two-dimensional composition, the perhaps intentional lack of the depth of field, black lines, and the rouge on the lady’s cheeks, all are reminiscent of Chinese painting and decorative arts. Comprising mostly sketches he did in private study, Sanyu’s early works on paper were simple and freehanded, a calligraphic style that is often considered more fluid than that of his oil works.
More than half a century later, Su Xiaobai (b.1949), who studied under Konrad Klapheck, has conceived a new practice in Germany that allows him to leave behind the narrative and concept in painting, and create sculptural paintings in lacquer, an ancient Chinese medium he stumbled across on a trip back to China. No longer preoccupied with the depth of field, he conjures a flow of color and light upon the undulating surface of his work; simplification and abstraction consummated.
For this year’s ART021, the Tina Keng Gallery presents classic pieces by Sanyu, includingResting Girland Seated Lady on an Armchair, as well as Su Xiaobai’s latest works Faintness, Sanguine, and Luminous.
Also on display at our booth this year is a careful selection of contemporary literati paintings. Once a student of the father of Chinese modernism Wu Guanzhong, Wang Huaiqing (b. 1944) explores the relationship between dimensions and colors in abstraction imbued with a sense of space that is uniquely Chinese. His installation pieces Shelfand Sketchseries pay homage to Sanyu in their subdued, poetic freehandedness.
Peng Wei’s new ink art exudes a refreshing sense of humor and elegance, as she paints on unexpected objects and surfaces, or incorporates listless and frail literary figures of the West, portraying the landscape in the literati’s eye in ethereal narratives. Her latest series I’ve Seen Some Lovely Thingsthat debuts at the ART021 is considered a curtain-raiser to her solo exhibition at the Suzhou Museum in 2017.
Su Meng-hung (b. 1976) earned his master’s degree in fine arts from the Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is known for his appropriation of Qing-dynasty painter Giuseppe Castiglione’s paintings, rendering imagery of birds and flowers in vibrant acrylic hues. His circular composition instantiates refined taste in an auspicious image of flowers and birds that embodies wealth and good fortune. A simmering sense of tension underneath the grandiose imagery portends decadence. His meticulous brushstrokes yield an overtone of mockery, ridiculing heedless replication and consumerism in art. An abandonment where he manipulates viewers’ consciousness is hence subtly revealed.
Hou I-ting (b. 1979) presents her latest pieces Li̍k-sú tsiam-tsílâng andKiànn tsí No.1. Through embroidery the artist examines current issues in a historical context, where she questions social phenomena from the female vantage point.
While geographical and chronological differences contribute to the diversity in these artists’ bodies of work, the earnest intent with which they were created allows them to eventually coalesce into an aesthetic constellation.