Group Exhibition Art Fairs Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong
Booth 1C06
Private Days (invitation only): Tues/Wed, March 21/22, 2023, 12pm to 8pm
Vernissage: Wed, March 22, 2023, 5pm to 8pm
Public Days: March 23-25, 2023, 2pm to 8pm
ShanghART Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 2023 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong with a compelling presentation of 12 selected artists' latest works at booth 1C06. Themed "Inscape", the group show explores artists' perspectives on the 'special interactions' among nature, humanity, spirituality and sociality from Liang Shaoji, Yang Fudong, Robert Zhao Renhui and Han Mengyun etc. Inscape is interpreted as a state of being, a cultivated landscape, an in-between boundary and an invisible field in the Analytical Dictionary of Characters. It significantly associates with the Buddhist awareness of phenomena that Chitta (heart and mind) determines the reflection of the world individual captures. Under the multi-layered contexts, the concept intends to unfold the circumstantial artistic representations imbued with symbolism constructed from the intertwined surrealism and realism and the overlapped history and presence. The exhibited works originated multidisciplinary from naturalism, and archaeology to religion, presenting in multimedia involving installation, photography and painting.
The collective exhibition presents each artist's inspiration and deep reflection in the context of self-renewal and response to the environment of drastic external changes. "Silk, Think and Zen Poetry" centred on Liang Shaoji's philosophy, exuding the spirit of "animism" that Zhuangzi advocates. Liang's works create multiple realms, from natural perception to subjective thinking and spiritual sublimation. A silky visual metaphor of porcelain fragments excavated from an ancient kiln resembles the astral boulder travelling through time and space. It manifests the artist's contemplation of the universe through silk and light. Another silk sculpture emulates the contour of the thousand-year-old rice unearthed from the Liangzhu cultural relics, which resonates with the continuity of ancient civilisation.
While Liang Shaoji's practice weaves the fibers of life into the texture of his work from a microscopic perspective, Han Mengyun's installation "Serenade" is a cosmos poetically interwoven with a multiplicity of cross-cultural metaphors and symbols by combining vernacular architectural structure and strips of indigo-dyed fabric made by Dong minority women in China as representation of women's labor in the history of textile-making. Layers of Dong cloth suspended on top of the wooden structure envelop the viewers like the endless darkness of the night, evoking contemplations about women's collective and universal memory of suffering. A series of paintings on the wall underneath the dark ceiling hints at the possibility of the coming of the day: the artist combines the formalism of Persian painting, the Indian woodblock printing technique, as well as the chromatic dualism of Chinese literati painting on the material basis of the Western oil painting, in an attempt to reconcile conflicts via formal hybridization. These images portraying highly condensed semiotic messages unfold respectively distinctive and interrelated, multilingual and multicultural narratives about women and their suffering across Sufi poetry, Arabic and Persian literature, mysticism, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.
Yang Fudong's photography presents a serene landscape that inspires narrative: a scene where monks stop and talk on a field path next to an old cottage deep in the woods, hidden somewhere in the sky-high Tiantai Mountain. Created in 2020, "Endless Peaks" is another essential practice for artist Yang Fudong to explore the boundaries of film. With the theme of "An Invisible Films", viewing "moving images" is separated and decomposed from the fixed time and space, definition standards and viewing forms. While cancelling the visibility of the "film", the viewer is allowed to visually wander in a series of independent images and meditate with individual responses. The continuous flow of mental ideas constitutes a perpetual state of mind stretching like mountain ranges rising into the clouds.
A two meters high surreal feather installation with a radiant colour is Zhao Renhui's latest representative work also exhibited in the concurrent solo exhibition "Monuments in the Forest" at ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai. As light as a feather but as heavy as a monument, this work interprets the core focus of penetrating the profound consequence through knowing the subtlety. In a process of chasing a feather, the discovery leads to getting a glimpse of the peculiar habits of wild animals in the city, then gradually unfolds the conflict and dependence between man and nature, and eventually exposes the critical concern about the neglected ecological status of the secondary forest which is vital for the reconstruction and regeneration of the symbiotic environment.
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