Feng Wei
Niubi Newbie Kids
Mixed media group exhibition: Chen Fei, Chen Ke, Zhou Jin Hua, Zhang Ye Xing, Zhou Yi Qian, Feng Wei
19 September to 13 October 2008
Schoeni Gallery
Schoeni was pivotal in the nineties in promoting the art of then unknown Chinese political pop artists such as Yue Min Jun, Zeng Fan Zhi and Zhang Xiaogang, many of whom have since gone on to achieve iconic status and high auction prices. This September the gallery is showing the next generation of 80s born unknowns, the rebellious Niubi Kids. Untranslatable and a play on Chinese slang curse words, the word 'Niubi' is used by young people to identify the new wave of rebellious cool young Chinese. Also termed China's 'Me' generation, a product of China's One Child policy, they are less concerned with politics than with themselves, issues of identity and alternative worlds. This provoking not-to-be missed show of mixed media works, replete with influences from the internet, comics, video games and Japanese culture, is the result of two years work by the gallery and is the first in a biannual series.
Alice Lai
Lai Nga-Yu (Alice): The Garden
7 September to 21 September 2008
Space One, Fotan Arts District
The vibrating fizzing colours of Hong Kong artist Alice Lai's Kandinskyesque abstract works shimmer with energy and express her love of life: "Our existence must be celebrated" she says. Lai uses negative space and pattern in her acrylic on canvas works to create entrancing fantasy other world landscapes filled with ovoid shapes and craggy lines. This is the first solo show for this promising graduate of the Chinese University in Hong Kong and Leeds University in Britain.
Ryan Wong
Ryan Wong: The Race
Blue Lotus Gallery, Fotan
7 September to 21 September 2008
While you are over in the Fotan warehouse arts district, be sure to check out renowned film and documentary maker Ryan Wong's photographic show 'The Race' in Space One's sister gallery Blue Lotus. Personal assistant to Jet Li, Ryan Wong has worked with a host of stars in his career including Nicole Kidman and John Woo. Timed to coincide with the start of Hong Kong's racing season, his show contains rich dramatic shots in which he conserves split seconds in the shifting action of race meetings. Through these images, like motion picture stills, Ryan Wong teases us with flashes of anticipation, absorption and jubilation showing us the exhilarating escapist drama of a race meeting.
Shao Yinong
Shao Yinong: Between Sky and Earth - White Dew
10 Chancery Lane Gallery
4 September to 11 October 2008
'Between Sky and Earth-White Dew' is one part of a twenty-four part exhibition, planned internationally, in which Shao Yinong explores the Chinese Lunar Calendar. Offering a fresh interpretation of Chinese ideology, this almost experiential installation is made of one continuous painting of traditional Chinese cloud symbols in muted colours, sometimes on silk and sometimes direct on the walls, wrapping the gallery and its corridors as if drawing visitors into a mist that seems to settle wherever it falls. "White Dew" is the first solar date on the Chinese Lunar Calendar that signifies the sudden change in temperature at the start of autumn, forming morning dew so dense that it appears white. Shao Yinong, better known as part of duo Shao Yinong and Muchen who have exhibited in the Pompidou Centre, Shanghai Art Museum and the Mori Museum in Japan, uses "White Dew" as a delicate symbol to explore issues of transition, illusion and change in the modern East.
Chan Yu
Showcase 82 Republic!
Mixed media group show: Chan Yu, Liu Ja, Guo Hongwei, Wan Yang, Zhou Siwei
Connoisseur Gallery
1 September to 30 September 2008
September is going to be an exciting month for Connoisseur's stable of young artists who will be exhibited in four locations across Asia. Known as the 82 Republic artists, this generation Y group of four painters and one sculptor was born in the eighties and incubated in their own dedicated gallery of the same name. Now ready for the world, their work will be shown in two of Connoisseur's gallery spaces in Hong Kong - Connoisseur Art Gallery and Connoisseur Contemporary - as well as at the international art fairs at ShContemporary in Shanghai and KIAF in Seoul, Korea and in Connoisseur's Singapore gallery as a parallel event of the Singapore Biennale 2008. Zhou Siwei's cartoon-like character in 'Infection - Astroboy no 7' and the flat translucent shapes of Chan Yu's 'Where is My Childhood? No 9' exemplify the new 'spirit' of this era which has been powerfully influenced by animation, toys and digital culture.
Larry Yung
Larry Yung: Desire - Loss
Amelia Johnson Contemporary
4 September to 27 September 2008
In the works of this much anticipated show two years in the making, Chinese American artist Larry Yung places idealized images of American and Chinese people alongside material objects of desire and cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse. Smiling characters are painted with a flatness reminiscent of the iconography of Chinese propaganda posters and 1950's US advertisements of the American Dream. This juxtaposition invites us to examine the complex relationship between the demise of the American Dream and the rise of Chinese aspirations. His stiff stylized figures appear artificial and remind us material prosperity is impermanent and illusory: part of a fleeting cycle of lack, desire, success and loss. His work has been commissioned by Proctor & Gamble, Pierre Cardin and Nordstroms and is held in various private collections including those of Marvel Comics, Esquire Magazine and Microsoft.
Yoshitaka Amano
Yoshitaka Amano - New Works
Art Statements Gallery
30 August to 10 October 2008
Fans of Japanese cartoons and animations are in for a treat this September at Art Statements Gallery where legendary Japanese manga artist Yoshitaka Amano is presenting a solo exhibition of new works. No longer a subculture with a limited following, manga has grown into one of the most significant creative forces exported from Japan in recent history and its influence on mainstream popular culture in film, advertising, industrial design, fashion and graphic design is now regarded as nothing short of a phenomenon. Born in 1952 Amano shot to fame in the 1970s with his cartoon series 'Gatchaman' (G-Force) and since then has created many popular epics including the hugely successful video game series 'Final Fantasy'. Featuring several 2 metre long aluminium panels depicting fantastical creatures, warriors, heroines and superheroes, this is a must-see show for manga buffs and manga neophytes alike.
Lee Waisler
Lee Waisler: Portraits and Abstractions
11 September to 11 October
Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Sundaram Tagore's first solo show in its new gallery in Hong Kong features the eminent American artist Lee Waisler whose works are in permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lee Waisler presents two series of works: portraits of iconic figures and abstracts, both in a trademark style in which he loads the canvas with layers of paints and organic materials to create thick sweeps of pigment separated by knife-sharp ridges. His portrait series includes the stylized over-bold faces of, amongst others, Marilyn Monroe, Mahatma Gandhi, Kafka and Albert Einstein. Their textured planes draw our hands to hover over the surface, curious, wanting to touch but not quite daring: a potent echo of the real life lure of iconic idols and our visceral compulsion to draw near, look closely and touch. For this show Waisler has created an interesting new body of work incorporating Chinese culture and imagery including a portrait of Anna May Wong, a famous Chinese-American actress of the 1930s and 1940s and Doctor Ho, a renowned healer from China.
Wilson Shieh
New Ink Art: Innovation and Beyond
Group exhibition
Hong Kong Museum of Art
22 August to 26 October 2008
"Ink has been part of our history for over 3,000 years," says guest curator Alice King. "I want to show people how Chinese ink painting has evolved through the ages. It is no longer painted the way it was even twenty years ago". Comprising 64 works by nearly 30 artists from Hong Kong and the mainland, this thorough survey places the increasingly popular Chinese contemporary ink genre in its historical context with a particular emphasis on the part played by Hong Kong master Lui Shou-kwan who, with his New Ink Movement, has inspired ink artists since the 1960s, amongst them Wucius Wong, Leung Kui-ting, Irene Chou and Kan Tai-keung. The exhibition looks to the future too with some controversial exhibits in the boundary-pushing section called "Is it Ink Art?" Some would say that works such as Cai Guoqiang's gunpowder images, organic installations and digital works are not ink art at all. This show asks us to question our view of ink as a medium and to appreciate it as an essence, an aesthetic which can find expression in a variety of forms.
Xue Song
Xue Song: A Tale of Our Modern Time
Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery
4 September to 27 September
An alarming accident was responsible for a crucial turning point in Xue Song's art practice: "In 1990, a big fire broke out in my dormitory". His books, magazines, newspapers, pictures and prints, damaged and burnt, were "released from their frames" leaving Xue Song with a new deeper understanding of the fragmentary, mutable nature of life. From these ashes emerged the embryo of his own significant unique visual language quite distinct from his contemporaries: a language of burning, restructuring, collage and drawing. The retrospective show exhibits Xue Song's range of interests since the fire from his pop art-coloured Mao series made in the 1990s inspired by leader portraits, model operas, big-character posters (Dazibao) and Red Guards to his more recent preoccupation with modern Shanghai and the intriguing relationship between people and cities.
Based in Hong Kong since 1992, Kate Evans is an art advisor, art intelligence consultant and arts writer with a special interest in contemporary Asian art. She has contributed to the South China Morning Post and Hong Tatler publications and is the founder of the news website Art Radar Asia News.
)
)
)