HAN BING – YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN TO SINGAPORE

Posted on 2021-11-29

In Han Bing’s new watercolors I found an interesting phenomenon. These paintings look like they were made by two people. One of them painted beautiful fish and animals, while the other painted something malicious. These two people work on the same image and the content they paint often conflicts. The person who painted fishes and animals used paint and water with grace and freedom, occupying the whole painting, with a strong attitude. The attitude of the other person is completely opposite. He seems to be trying to hide what he wants to paint. He hasn’t any expressive skills, he paints very light lines with water after the paper has dried. It is difficult to tell. This content seems to be important and I have to observe it carefully. First of all, in all the images there is a very unique symbol. Sometimes it looks like a trident, other times a bud of a lotus flower (typical in Chinese painting) until it becomes an ax. His appearance is constantly changing, but he has always been stubbornly present in every image.

Opposite – Untitled (You Have Never Been to Singapore), 2021

Exhibition runs through to December 11th, 2021

Suburbia Contemporary
Carrer de Valencia, 345
08009 Barcelona
Spain

suburbiacontemporary.com

  

JAKUP FERRI – TINTIRINTI

Posted on 2021-11-29

Jip designed the carpets in the digital world of Animal Crossing, a children’s game that allows you to add blocks with the click of a mouse, and create colourful shirts or caps for the characters.

Made of up squares that look like pixels, the carpets are composed of brightly coloured geometric shapes and share the same seeming simplicity as Jakup Ferri’s earlier figurative works: scenes of everyday life poetically captured in pocket-sized drawings.

In his first video works, developed during a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Jakup Ferri offered a subtle, endearing and witty self-reflection on the isolation of the non-Western artist trying to hold his own in the Western art world. Ferri is particularly drawn to folk art and traditional artisanal techniques. After returning to his hometown of Prisina in Kosovo, Ferri embarked on collaborations with embroiderers and carpet weavers from Kosovo, villages in Albania, Suriname and Burkina Faso. Using traditional skills and methods, they created productions inspired by his drawings. This collaborative process also supported workshops and traditional crafts whose survival is threatened by capitalist production systems.

Opposite – Installation views

Exhibition runs through to December 11th, 2021

Andriesse ~ Eyck Gallery
Leliegracht 47
1016 GT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

andriesse-eyck.com

  

SHI YONG – ONE MAN’S ART HISTORY

Posted on 2021-11-29

Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Shanghai Light Industrial School. He now resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong is a representative figure of contemporary Chinese artists who first started working with installation and video media. Since 1993, his works have been widely exhibited both in China and abroad. His earliest artistic practices focused on revealing the subtlety of our reality and the inherent tension of the “system”. Since the end of 1990s, Shi began focusing on the idea of Shanghai’s transformations under the Chinese economic reform, which contributed to a discussion of globalization and consumerism. Since 2006, with the work “Sorry, There will be no Documenta in 2007”, he turned his attention to the art world itself, pondering how to provide a more rational perspective through his creative works. Shi Yong’s 2015 solo exhibition “Let All Potential Be Internally Resolved Using Beautiful Form” continues his artistic practice, disclosing his intention to expand the reflection and practice of “control” under the seemingly “abstract” future.

Opposite – We Don’t Want to Stop, 2006

Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2022

ShanghART
West Bund, Bldg.10, 2555 Longteng Avenue
Xuhui District
200232 Shanghai

www.shanghartgallery.com

  

GORKA MOHAMED – HALL OF MIRRORS

Posted on 2021-11-22

In Hall of Mirrors Gorka Mohamed presents a series of portraits depicting abstract characters that are composed of recognisable and familiar features and objects, but, at the same time, give off a disquieting halo that instills a certain uneasiness. We could speak here of what Mark Fisher describes in The Weird and the Eerie, of why we find something unpleasant, even if it is framed within a certain familiarity, because it does not conform to our nature. However, although the characters may at first convey to us the virulence we might find on the margins of the society we currently inhabit, for Mohamed, these characters also show us how to appropriate what is toxic to us–in a social context–and how to transform it into a catalyst for its own remedy.

Opposite – The Firefox Wizard of Oz, 2021

Exhibition runs through to January 29th, 2022

Galería Marta Cervera
Calle Valencia 28
28012 Madrid
Spain

www.galeriamartacervera.com

  

ERIK BULATOV – PART I

Posted on 2021-11-22

Part I of a solo exhibition by Erik Bulatov

Opposite – Water Flowed, 2001

Exhibition runs through to December 23rd, 2021

SKOPIA
Vieux-Grenadiers 9
1205 Geneva
Switzerland

skopia.ch

  

TITUS SCHADE – UMLAND

Posted on 2021-11-22

The protagonists in Titus Schade’s disconcerting and refreshingly bewildering paintings are architectures that seem like stage sets presented like props on shelves resembling typesetting cases, on tables, or in deserted, bleak landscapes and as motifs on Delft tiles.

Opposite – Vier Fliesen – Windmühlen, Doppelhaus, Gebirge und Dorf, 2021

Exhibition runs through to December 18th, 2021

Galerie EIGEN + ART
Auguststraße 26
10117 Berlin
Germany

eigen-art.com