Art Basel Hong Kong Online Viewing Room 2020

Artists: Duan Zhengqu, Guo Cheng, Guan Yong, Liang Wei, Shi Guowei, Tang Yongxiang, Wang Zhongjie and Wu Chen

VIP Preview: 2020.03.18 – 20

Public Days: 2020.03.20 – 25

Magician Space is pleased to participate in the first Art Basel Hong Kong Online Viewing Room, from March 18 to 25, 2020. In this Online Viewing Room, we will present over ten pieces of paintings and sculptures by eight artists, include Duan Zhengqu, Guo Cheng, Guan Yong, Liang Wei, Shi Guowei, Tang Yongxiang, Wang Zhongjie and Wu Chen.

This special project ‘Gestures above the Ground’ features eight Chinese artists’ recent works. The project organized by the works from their representative practices, which based on the objects of human living condition and broader natural environment, to indicate the actions, engagement and spiritual thinking in a view of reality scene.

The landscape, folk custom and nature from the surrounding environment are the related elements for Duan Zhengqu, Guan Yong, Shi Guowei and Wang Zhongjie’ works. The inspirations of Duan Zhengqu’s paintings come from the familiar objects and ordinary life from the local milieu of Shanbei region, northwest China. Duan captures the folk customs and the people with a simple life to express the plain but pulsating emotions and living on this land. The subject matters, history, memory and consciousness are placed onto the canvas by Guan Yong, he captures the inner consciousness of being in a trance but crossing time and space, to reflects the relation of sensibility and reality in a temporary structure. The narratives of secular life have always been hidden under the invisibility by Wang Zhongjie, his constant practice of forms as the geometric structure of the frame and colour halos searches the inner strength and authentic present. Shi Guowei’s photo-paintings blur the boundaries between the photography and painting, reality and imagination, it conveys nature’s subtle and vivid qualities and the Chinese literati spirit with nature as a metaphoric resonance.

On the other hand, the objects both in reality and visual representation are transformed into reflections of social structure in the works of Tang Yongxiang, Liang Wei, Wu Chen and Guo Cheng. The core of Tang Yongxiang’s paintings is the appearance and connection of multiple shapes. Through layers, covering, parts off-placing, and relations between the positive and negative shapes, Tang re-constructs the contours of objects into the perception psychologically. Liang Wei builds up a physical landscape in her paintings, which compose of imageries of urban environments, architecture, machinery, cinema and classical art. The compositions are grown organically out of chaos but resolve in a sense of equilibrium. Wu Chen appropriates and deconstructs imagery from classic paintings and popular culture, as a sanctified visual archive, to reveal a perspective of artist inner struggle, self-identity, and criticism of reality through humorous and satirical brushstrokes and themes, and exaggerated expressions. Digital technologies and basic physics are often used in the sculptures by Guo Cheng, he attempts to depict the methods and limitations of our perceptions to objects in modern society, and questions the subjectivity of human, species and abiotic things through the artistic creation based on artifacts/technical objects.

Visit via
Art Basel Online Reviewing Room & Art Basel Mobile App