Gimme Shelter: Group Exhibit in Pékin Fine Arts (Hong Kong)
“Gimme Shelter” explained by Pékin Fine Arts: As a gallery, they aim to provide “shelter” for artists: Now, more than ever, gallerists’ first duty is to artists, by collaborating closely, and providing a platform for artwork display. “Display” in the broadest sense, well beyond a showroom for art object
consumption, as a place of free and public idea exchange. A gallery can go further than merely providing an artwork exhibition platform. A gallery can be an incubator of ideas; a place to nurture and to protect artists’ visions, experiments, and pursuits. In short, the gallery can be an open space, where artists are invited to voice their most compelling creative expressions.
“Gimme Shelter” includes the artworks of eight artists from Hong Kong and around the world whose work will be exhibited in more depth in Hong Kong, post Coronavirus, (and hopefully later this year). Artists featured in “Gimme Shelter” are Ai An 艾安 (b. 1963 Liaoning Province, lives and works in Beijing), Chen Shaoxiong 陈劭雄 (1962 - 2016 Shantou, Guangdong Province, China), Liu Ding 刘鼎 (b. 1976, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, lives and works in Beijing), Gordon Cheung 張逸斌 (b. 1975 London, lives and works in London, UK), Daphné Mandel 曼乐婷 (b.1975, Lausanne, Switzerland, lives and works in Hong Kong), Nashunbatu 那顺巴图（b.1969, Inner Mongolia, China. lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany), Wang Qingsong 王庆松 (b. 1966, Heilongjiang Province, lives and works in Beijing), Tomoko Yoneda 米田知子 (b. 1965 in Akashi-city, Japan. Lives and works in London, UK).
About the exhibition
Dates: Feb. 15 – May 2, 2020
Venue: Pékin Fine Arts (Hong Kong)
Courtesy of Pékin Fine Arts, for further information, please contact info@pekinfinearts.com or call: (852) 2177 6190.
Wang Jianuo Solo Exhibition in Pékin Fine Arts (Beijing)
“Being An Artist Is Better Than Being President of the United States”
– Wang Jianuo
Pekin Fine Arts presents an exhibition of twenty-one (21) new works by China’s most well-known urban artist, Wang Jianuo. Wang’s pop-inspired artworks, (interlacing childhood cartoons, fashion labels, and seductive slogans together in mixed media graffiti inspired paintings), are rapidly gaining wide-spread recognition from Gen Z shoppers to Boomers new to the art world, but well versed in entrepreneurial consumer culture. Using free-hand painting, graffiti, stencils, cartoon icons, collaged ads, and news print, his child-like canvases appear at once both “happy and bright” as well as slightly ominous, hinting at darker themes bubbling just below the surface. In Wang’s world, we are experiencing a massive shift to a new pop culture, one dominated by a younger generation’s “bling-bling” brand devotion, digital device addiction, and global consumption.
Wang left China for the UK when he was 17, studied art at Wimbledon College, University of the Arts London, receiving an MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London in 2013.
Since returning to China, Wang exhibited widely, gathering a strong following among art lovers as well as more mainstream audiences. Wang’s work resonates with his Millennial generation, who grew up binge-watching television cartoons from Japan and the USA over school holidays. Wang pays homage in his works to childhood cartoon characters such as Pikachu, Bart Simpson, Tom and Jerry, Bambi and Thumper, Donald Duck, and Japan’s Sakuragi Hanamichi. China’s Millennials, having grown up with these Peter Pan – like characters who never grow old, cherish their memory (and collect their likenesses well into adulthood), as sweet reminders of bygone childhood days.
Wang’s seductive brand of childlike “Urban Pop” is filled with consumer appropriation, clearly influenced by Gen Z’s information superhighway of e-commerce, tech companies, bitcoin bosses, digital entertainment, and other close connections to today’s on-line entertainment world. By tagging fashionable streetwear logos in his artwork Wang points not only to an aesthetic of “Street” influences, but more aptly, to all that is shared digitally in peer-to-peer global consumption.
In his latest work, Wang sets out to find a more personal voice, amidst a barrage of pop culture imagery, juxtaposing his broken heart emoji tags in unlikely fields of otherwise “cheerful” scenes.
- Meg Maggio, Nov. 19, 2019 / Pékin Fine Arts, Beijing
About the exhibition
Dates: Mar. 4 – Apr. 28
Venue: Pékin Fine Arts (Beijing)
Courtesy of Pékin Fine Arts, for further information, please contact info@pekinfinearts.com or call: (8610) 8434 0791.
