Gagosian participates in West Bund Art & Design with an extensive group presentation. The gallery will exhibit works by Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, Urs Fischer, Katharina Grosse, Hao Liang, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Jia Aili, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Takashi Murakami & Virgil Abloh, Albert Oehlen, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Cameron Welch, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Takashi Murakami, Five-Clawed Blue Dragon Descends with Thunderclouds, 2023
Acrylic, platinum leaf and gold leaf on canvas mounted on aluminum frame, 39 3/8 Å~ 63 inches (100 Å~ 160 cm)
© 2023 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved
Many of the featured artists represent aspects of the natural world, or refer to it in order to shed new light on human culture and psychology. Zeng Fanzhi’s cast silver sculptures In Search of Plum through Snowscape I (2014) and II (2016) reduce the tree, a symbol of growth, to the melancholic figure of a single gnarled limb. In an accompanying painting, Untitled (2012), a wooded landscape is distinguished by black branches that stand out in sharp relief against their background, blending figuration with abstraction. Jia AiIi’s painting Sacred Mountain (2023), a depiction of Mount Everest, augments the artist’s investigation of historical and literary themes with the properties of a real location, while also acknowledging the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and connecting the human experience to nature at large. And in Drifting Clouds (2019), Urs Fischer employs a stylized landscape device in conjunction with simplified color, interweaving headshots of male and female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Takashi Murakami’s painting of a dragon alludes to historical depictions of the mythical creature
as a Buddhist symbol of optimism and good fortune while allowing the subject to resonate with contemporary Japanese visual culture. Ritual Purity (2019), a rondo by Damien Hirst, features a mandala-like design produced by adhering butterflies to the canvas’s gloss enamel surface. For Hirst, the insects symbolize the cycles of change and growth, life and death, their unique patterning mimicking human individuality. Thomas Houseago’s expressive canvas Sunset Still Life with Shell (2023), which evokes the flora of Malibu at sunrise through vibrant color and pulsating line, belongs to a recent body of work reflecting on cosmic and spiritual interconnectedness and the sublime power of nature. And in her painting She’s distressed (2019), Jadé Fadojutimi suggests the meandering forms of plant life in an abstract composition of color, space, and line, interweaving her everyday experience of beauty with the quest for identity and self-knowledge.
THOMAS HOUSEAGO,Sunset Still Life with Shell, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 25 1/2 inches (81.3 x 64.8 cm) © Thomas Houseago Photo: Paul Salveson Courtesy Gagosian
Other artists make reference to art historical or cultural touchstones, alluding to key moments and strategies through differing approaches to representation. Glenn Brown’s painting Dirty Creamer (2022), a portrait of a puffed-cheeked bagpiper in the artist’s characteristic swirling brushstrokes, is based on a Flemish Baroque drawing that illustrates the Dutch proverb that the young always follow the example of the old. The surface of Cameron Welch’s painting Oracle (2023) was constructed using the ancient technique of mosaic, the cultural legacy of which is often neglected by Western audiences—an oversight that the artist confronts. Using marble, glass, ceramic, stone, and paint, Welch orchestrates a material polyphony that echoes the intersection of diverse systems of meaning.
General Information
Exhibition Period
November Saturday 9 to Tuesday 12, 2023
Venue
West Bund Dome Art Center Hall A
Booth 102
Opening Hours
VIP Preview
09 November 13:00-21:00
10 November 12:00-13:00
Public Hours
10 November 13:00-18:00
11,12 November 12:00-18:00
Website
http://www.westbundshanghai.com
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