Participating Artist: Huang Yulong, Wei Xiaoguang, Zhang Wei, Zhou Jie
Exhibition Brief
In Still: Contemporary Works from a New Generation of Chinese Artists, Art+ Shanghai Gallery brings together four young Chinese artists in a group exhibition that celebrates the richness and complexity of the contemporary’s flittering moment. The four artists, Huang Yulong, Wei Xiaoguang, Zhang Wei, and Zhou Jie, are all mainland Chinese artists born in the 1980s whose works are representative of a new trend in Chinese art that combines the appreciation of stillness and reflection of the moment with a continuation of traditional thought, immersive depth, and a quiet aesthetic.
Their works of painting and sculpture play with visual perception and expectations of reality to explore a sense of underlying tension and creation. Life is experienced as a continual series of moments, with each vibrating between the past and future. Still: Contemporary Works from a New Generation of Chinese Artists is thus the pensive celebration of that tense, unsure moment of present potential
About the Artists
Huang Yulong is a Beijing-based artist born in 1983 in Huainan, Anhui Province, China. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jiangsu Province in 2007. Huang’s sculptures of traditional ceramic porcelain and bronze are strongly influenced by the phenomenon of foreign street culture in China. Best known for his use of hip-hop imagery such as hoodies and Chinese imagery such as Buddhas, his work displays a convergence of Western and Eastern styles, an urban aesthetic with classical underpinning. The mash-ups of imagery and materiality challenge our expectations of serenity and the contemporary to reflect China’s rapid transition from tradition to the international.
Wei Xiaoguang is a New York-based artist born in 1986 in Inner Mongolia, China. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing in 2010, and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from CUNY Hunter College in New York City in 2014. His works of oil paint on canvas play with visual dimension and digital realism in a technique he refers to as Photoshop Realism. With a sleekness and simplicity that borrows from advertisement aesthetics, shapes seem to protrude from canvases due to Wei’s manipulation of light and shadow. Some brush strokes defy the flatness of the canvas with three-dimensional texture, while others offer the illusion of three-dimensions on the two-dimensional plane.
Zhang Wei is a Beijing-based artist born in 1984 in Pingdingshan, Henan Province, China. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing in 2010 and 2014. Using mineral paints and watercolor on canvas, his works trick the eye into seeing shadows and depth with soft gradients and shading. His geometric compositions are based on the idea of folding, overlapping, and layering, creating dimensionality that lies somewhere between the planar and spatial.
Zhou Jie is a Chongqing-based artist born in 1988 in Sichuan Province, China. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the Oil Painting Department of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (SFAI) in Chongqing in 2010 and 2013. His works of oil on canvas generally feature subdued hues and a darkened palette, invigorating an atmosphere of searching mystery and a quiet, unsettled sensitivity. Thin lines are scratched into black and gray paint to create landscapes of wiry mountains and landmarks, a productive effect that is caused through the reduction and removal of paint rather than its addition. Harkening back to traditional landscape imagery of mountains and water, Zhou’s work is bold and explorative, persistent and complex.
