Works by QIU DESHU & ROSS LEWIS
Come & join us on Sunday, May 25, 2014
between 16:00 and 18:00
1120/5 Huashan Road, 200050, Shanghai
at the intersection with Xingguo Rd across from the Radisson Hotel
(Metro Line 2 & 11 Jiangsu Road Station, Exit 4 or Line 10 Sh. Library station)
Duration: 25 May – 25 June 2014
Opening Hours: by appointment only
Tel: 139 1811 9712
Ross LEWIS, Ink on Paper, 8’ x 5’, 2011
Years of studying Chinese culture have led New York artist Ross Lewis to develop a distinct visual language by incorporating aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities of Chinese artistic traditions into his installations, paintings and sculpture.
In his recent “Rope Paintings”, the artist departs from his training in the Chinese brush to forge a unique and articulated line using rope and string saturated with ink juxtaposed with collage on paper.
“The Rope Paintings are a distillation of ideas and visual images, an essential amalgam of deeply personal memories and invented realities, offering a shared set of experiences and situations.” –from the essay Ross Lewis/Synthesis and Amalgam by Elizabeth Reede, 2013.
This art underscores the creativity that derives from cross-cultural influences.
Concurrent with his practice as a painter, Lewis’ installation work includes temporary and permanent commissions in the US and abroad including: Parallel Motion, a ninety-six foot long mural in Battery Park City, NY, fanscapes, a series of wind-activated circular painted nylon and steel fan sculptures created for Central Park’s Belvedere Castle, Dancing in Pink Snow, a mixed-media installation in a 19th century horse stable in Berlin and Urban Intersections, an eighty foot by twenty-four foot high wall mural comprised of 500, 000 pieces of glass and ceramic tile at PS 307 in Queens, NY.
Qiu Deshu is a Shanghai mixed-media abstract artist born in 1948. He is best known for the role he played in founding the unofficial “Grass” or “Cao Cao” artists’ group in 1979 with the intention to break from the bonds of the institutional system of art prevalent during the Mao era. He did so by emphasizing on individualism, integrity and personal artistic language without being militant.
Because of this Qiu Deshu was marginalized till 2008 when he had his first show at the Shanghai Art Museum. In the meantime, he developed a technique of “Cracks” by tearing his ink on paper works and sticking them back on a painted canvas, achieving stunning abstract collages. 3 of his works were included in “Painting the Chinese Dream”, an exhibition held at Smith College Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum in 1982-3. He also spent the academic year of 1985/86 as a visiting artist at Tufts University where he painted a large mural and had a solo show. Since the 80’s, Qiu Deshu has been consistent in following his “Crack” technique.
Ross Lewis and Qiu Deshu first met when Lewis was curating exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art in New York in the early 80’s. He visited Qiu’s studio in Shanghai at that time to see artworks firsthand and they only recently met up again, rekindling their friendship. Their paintings spring from a deep understanding of traditional ink painting and a desire to find their individual expression and response to that tradition.
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