In addition to a select number of artists whom Galerie Urs Meile Beijing-Lucerne has helped achieve international reputations through long-term and ongoing collaborations, we are also glad to offer our platform to the fresh and energetic perspectives of a younger generation of talented and creative artists. Galerie Urs Meile is pleased to announce the opening of five solo shows in our Beijing gallery by the following artists: Yan Xing (*1986 in Chongqing, China), Christian Schoeler (*1978 in Hagen, Germany), Li Gang (*1986 in Dali, China), Hu Qingyan (*1982 in Weifang, China) and Cheng Ran (*1981 in Inner Mongolia, China). These five artists represent a variety of educational backgrounds, media and artistic practices as well as a diverse range of subject matters in their works, which are both contrasting and complementary. (At exhibitions, printed materials will be provided for each show.)

Yan Xing “REALISM”

At his first solo exhibition, Yan Xing will present the two works: “They Are Not Here”(2010) and “REALISM”(2011). Yan Xing uses a wide variety of media, including performance, video, and photography, to create multi-layered projects. “They Are Not Here” will feature photographs and video documentation of a project in which Yan Xing placed seven men in a hotel room to spend an afternoon together. Yan Xing tried to challenge existing systems of daily life and encouraged the audience to reflect on the co-existence of various forms and levels of presence and existence. His most recent art project, “REALISM”, contains elements of performance, sculpture, photography and installation. A huge plaster sculpture stands in the scene constructed by the artist, reflecting his inner desires. Together with seven actors, Yan Xing will enact a two-hour long performance at the opening of the exhibition. A series of processes, including calculation, description, rehearsal, occupation and negotiation, will enable them to realise his intention to plead to an imagined reality. Through this performance, which is full of discrepancies and repetition, opposition and union, complexity and simplicity, Yan Xing wishes to encourage a thorough discussion of the mechanisms of art history generation. This is also an embodiment of Yan Xing’s sincere and steadfast desire to achieve “the creation of a reality without any difference”, and his crazed persistence to realise “the full accomplishment of the unavoidable mistake”.

Text by Galerie Urs Meile

*The performance will start at 4.30pm at the opening event.

Christian Schoeler “PUSSY, KING OF THE PIRATES”

The miscreant, the social outcast, the Dostoevskiian idiot, the innocent and the lost – it is the perennial outsiders, those figures that are either ignored or serve as objects of punishment in real life, that appear most at home in the oil paintings and mixed media collages of Christian Schoeler. Typically (though not exclusively) young men, his subjects’ facial expressions and bodily contortions ultimately reflect their profound situation of enforced detachment. His anti-heroes stare back at us – or else turn their backs on us completely to observe the landscape – daring us to find in them projections of our own darkest fears and traces of lost memories. In Schoeler’s words, “My work is about a sort of love affair – not between me and the model, but between the viewer and the model.” The artist is currently participating in Galerie Urs Meile’s three-month ‘artist in residence’ programme in Beijing. His first solo exhibition in China will feature works created as a result of his experiences in China, from which we will be able to observe his approach within the context of a western artist in contemporary China.

Text by Travis Jeppesen

*Galerie Urs Meile would also like to welcome you to attend "Blood and Guts in High School", a discussion with Christian Schoeler, which will be held at the CAFA Art Museum Auditorium Room at 4pm on September 4 2011.

Li Gang “BETWEEN”

Li Gang not only moves fluidly and playfully between different media, but is also constantly and seriously involved in the process of inventing new forms. He is an artist who reacts to everyday perceptions, while at the same time sounding out the depths of human existence and other fundamental issues that he is confronted with. In his most recent works for the exhibition “Between”, he has explored a number of new directions. A white pedestal featuring traces of red dye from 100 RMB bills leads to a unique exploration of the dialogue between money and art, while the work “Error” challenges the audience’s way of seeing, and pieces of coal containing rows of screws provide a starting point for his reflection upon the relationship between modern technology and nature.

Text by Heinz-Norbert Jocks

Hu Qingyan “REVEALING THE RUSE”

Hu Qingyan created the two works, “A Bundle of Bamboo No.1” and “A Bundle of Bamboo No.2”, by fashioning ‘bamboo poles’ from the root of the golden nanmu tree, which he then bound into bundles. He formed the work “Cloud” out of the same volume of marble as his own body. Both the 'bamboo poles' and 'clouds' created by the artist mirror his obsession with imitation. But his clay objects, which appear again and again only to vanish away, likewise reflect a keen awareness of this obsession. In “Narrative of a Pile of Clay”, clay is used to randomly copy objects observed by the artist. When a good imitation of the object assumes shape, it immediately becomes a ‘work’, at which point another object is formed, a process that goes on and on indefinitely. At the instant in which Hu Qingyan’s ‘unrelated objects’, to wit his ‘bamboo poles’ and ‘clouds’, are respectively fixed in wood, stone, and clay, the artist has already ‘revealed the ruse’, and yet “Revealing the Ruse” is not a matter of sheer cloddish ignorance, but is in fact quite deliberate.

Text by Liu Libin

Cheng Ran “EVERYTHING HAS ITS TIME”

A fragmented sound clip on a mobile phone contains a recording of a piece of music played by a busker on the metro in Paris. When the recording was made, the air was muggy in the gloomy compartment of the train; people on the train were standing on their own gazing at each other indifferently. All of sudden, the music echoed through the carriage and seemed to tear through the air and the people on board; the music shone into everyone’s hearts, with no way out. The sound of music mixed together with the noise of different languages, the environment and the air of the carriage, broken by the movement of the train. Because I hesitated for an instant, I didn’t record the beginning of the tune. I have tried to imagine and remember that moment, and have tried to recreate it by manipulating the recording and making it into a loop.

Text by Cheng Ran

Date:Sep 4, 2011 - Oct 23, 2011

Opening: Sep 3, 2011, 16:00, Saturday

Venue: Galerie Urs Meile (Beijing) (Beijing, China)

Artists: Cheng Ran, Hu Qingyan, Li Gang, Christian Schoeler, Yan Xing

Organizer: Galerie Urs Meile (Beijing) (Beijing, China)

Courtesy of Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing – Lucerne