Don Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of QU Fengguo’s solo exhibition “Midsummer” on 3 June 2017, which is the artist’s third solo exhibition in the gallery. “Midsummer” presents the paintings that belong to the series “Four Seasons” composed between 2015 and 2017. In the latest stage of his practice, the artist has carried on the subject of Chinese traditional solar terms, endowing the horizontal straightness with a thought of temporality.
It is surprising that the artist strikes the balance between leveled stripes and perpendicular cuttings while adding diagonal tangents as intersections to further extract the form of time and space being intersected. The multi-dimensional perception of one’s changeable fate is embedded in the visual structure once isotropic, which forms a self-grounding open field.
“Four Seasons” by QU Fengguo stems from a sense of aesthetic judgment analogous to “mono-no-aware.” It is the unconscious capture of impermanence and ultimate emotions brought by the seasons as a natural kind. Seized with a sudden impulse and all the patience, the artist obtains extraordinarily deep insight and empathy into external objects that are changeable and unpredictable, as though the distance between persons and things is expanded into a fleeting moment.
By deliberately leaving overlapped sections within the streaming stripes, the artist constructs the order of time and space concealed behind the chromatic text, either affirmatively or negatively affecting a more dynamic composition relation that indicates the immediate generation of images.
QU Fengguo’s paintings not only involve the freezing frame of abstraction, but also the prompt of transforming history. The art of “Mono-ha” from Japan in the 60s and 70s and the urban experience in Shanghai both provide upholding for the artist’s will. The perspective of oblique projection accommodates itself properly in the presentation of “Midsummer,” which coincide with a new interpretation of the dwelling time from the artist.
Qu Fengguo, Spring, Four Seasons, 2016; Oil on canvas, 145x220cm
About the artist
QU Fengguo, born in Liaoning in 1966, graduated from Stage Design Department, Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1988, commenced abstract painting around 1990. Currently working and living in Shanghai, teaching at the same school where he graduated.
QU Fengguo’s work has been widely exhibited in numerous art institutions throughout the world, including China Art Museum (Shanghai, 2016), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai, 2013), CAI-Contemporary Art Institute (Sapporo, 2010), National Art Museum of China (Beijing, 2008)，Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, 2004), Vienna Künstlerhaus (Vienna, 2002), Montclair State University Art Gallery (New Jersey, 2000), The 3rd Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2000), Liu Haisu Art Museum (Shanghai, 1997), Yokohama Museum of Art (Yokohama, 1993), etc. His solo exhibitions include “Mí Shēng” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2016), “Grain Rain” (Line Gallery, Beijing, 2015), “Into the Spring” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2013), “Endless Landscape” (Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, 2007), etc.
About the exhibition
Dates: Jun 3, 2017 - Jul 23, 2017
Venue: Don Gallery
Courtesy of the artist and Don Gallery.
