► Tina Keng Gallery at Frieze New York 2022
Venue | The Shed
Booth | B03
Participating Artists | Su Xiaobai, Ava Hsueh, Yao Jui-Chung, Su Meng-Hung
Opening Hours |
▋VIP Preview ▋
05.19 (Thur.) 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
05.20 (Fri.) 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
▋Public Days ▋
05.21 (Sat.) 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
05.22 (Sun.) 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Su Xiaobai (b. 1949)
Born in 1949 in Wuhan, China, Su Xiaobai currently lives and works in Shanghai and Düsseldorf. He attended Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1985, and was later awarded a German cultural and art scholarship to participate in a graduate program offered by the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1987. Under the guidance of Konrad Klapheck, Gerhard Richter, and Markus Lupertz, he strived to break away from the skills he mastered in Beijing, and later developed a visual language rich in personal experience, life observation, and abstract symbols.
The artist’s effort to conjure abstraction through Chinese lacquer epitomizes a cross-cultural dialogue. Experienced as a mirror of time, the administration of texture and materiality in Su’s painting educes a sculpturesque serenity in a fortuitous resonance with the wabi-sabi philosophy — namely a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. His employment of lacquer infuses a contemporaneity into a traditional medium rich with history, transmitting a subtle visual warmth in a painterly practice characterized by light and shadow. The artist paints layers of vibrantly colored lacquer in a purely structural and balanced composition. The seemingly arbitrary, yet meticulously deliberate handling of visual forms reveals the artist’s pursuit of aesthetic depth.
Su has exhibited internationally, including Beneath a descending moon, breathing, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); And there’s nothing I can do, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo, Japan (2015), Art Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); The Armory Show, Piers 92 & 94, New York, U.S.A. (2018); Infinite Blue, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A. (2018); The World Is Yours, as Well as Ours, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, U.K. (2016); Grand Immensity, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2013); The Dynasty of Colours, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany (2009); Kao Gong Ji, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2008); and Intangible Greats, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2007).
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Ava Hsueh (b. 1956)
Ava Hsueh obtained her D.A. degree in Arts from New York University, and currently serves as the Professor Emeritus in the Tainan National University of the Arts. She has been appointed as the Director of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Chief Executive of National Cultural and Arts Foundation, and has served as the Dean of the College of Visual Arts, the Chair of the Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory in Tainan National University of the Arts.
Hsueh has long chosen abstract language as her artistic expression. In dexterously conjuring biomorphic abstraction and geometric abstraction, she creates a hybrid reality that corresponds to epochal shifts in contemporary abstract art.
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Yao Jui-Chung (b. 1969)
Yao specializes in photography, installation, and painting. The themes of his works are varied, but they all examine the absurdity of the human condition. Representative works include the “Action Series,” where he explores Taiwan’s identity in Military Takeover (1994), subverts modern Chinese political myths in Recovering Mainland China (1997), and examines post-colonialism in The World is for All (1997–2000), as well as Long March — Shifting the Universe (2002).
In recent years, he has created photo installations combining the style of “gold and green landscape” with the superstitions that permeate Taiwanese folklore, expressing a false and alienated “cold reality” that is specific to Taiwan. Representative works include the series “Celestial Barbarians” (2000), “Savage Paradise” (2000), and “Heaven” (2001). Another photo installation series “Libido of Death” (2002) and “Hill” (2003) probe the eternal issue of body and soul.
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Su Meng-Hung (b. 1976)
Su Meng-Hung graduated from the Changhua National University of Education, Taiwan, and Goldsmiths College, University of London, and received his PhD from the Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan.
The artist works across such mediums as painting, silkscreen print, installation, and sculpture, in an attempt to transform traditional Chinese imagery into a visual vocabulary of grandiose icons. Driven by an intent to ridicule while popularizing social codes, he often adapts elements of fauna and flora from the work of late Qing-dynasty painters in his satirizing of the taste of the aristocracy and literati
Inspired by Ms. Coco Chanel’s collection of ebony lacquer screens, Su’s 2019 series “Xiang Nai Er” takes famous Chinese paintings as templates, fusing abstract expressionism with automatism manifested in splashed ink landscape. In re-contextualizing the still life paintings, flower and bird paintings, and the erotic paintings referenced in his work, he dissociates them from their original cultural significance. Rearranged into a flamboyant scene, these visual narratives confront the viewer with their sensational presence.
Su’s notable solo exhibitions include: Self-exoticism, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); Xiang Nai Er, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); A Painter of the Empire, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2016); Poppy, Golden Lotus, Dopamine, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2012); Unreachable Blooming, IT Park, Taipei, Taiwan (2007); and Kai Dao Tu Mi, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2003). He has also participated in international exhibitions and biennials, including Dialogue on Printmaking — The Taiwan-U.S. Exchange Exhibition, Taiwan Academy, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, New York, U.S. (2016); Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2014); Busan Biennale, Korea (2008); and Jam — Cultural Congestions in Contemporary Asian Art, South Hill Park Art Centre, Bracknell, U.K. (2009).
