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Liu Wei (劉韡): “Sandwiches No. 13” (oil on canvas, 2015)

Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu Wei (劉韡) graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou in 1996.

Manhattan-, Hong Kong-, and Seoul-based gallery Lehmann Maupin describes 劉韡‘s work:

Liu Wei “explores 21st century socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of contemporary society and the transformation of developing cities and the urban landscape.

“In many of his sculptural and installation works, he uses found materials that are re-contextualized to draw new meanings out of the materials from which they are made.”

Liu Wei’s works are exhibited and collected globally. Institutional and private collectors include Seoul’s Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art; the M+ in Hong Kong, and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.

Examine Liu Wei’s entire œuvre. This work documents an eye and sense for the universal appeal of line, color, and composition.

Lehmann Maupin is highlighting Liu Wei’s work during this week’s Art Basel.

Look for the extraordinary “Library V-II” (books, wood, and iron) of 2015-2018.

See: Liu Wei, Lehmann Maupin

#art #artmarket #arthistory #liuwei #beijing #hangzhou #lehmannmaupin #newyork #miami #london #berlin #zurich #vienna #oslo #milan #dubai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #collection #portfolio #tangibleasset #collector #leeumsamsungmuseumofart #leeumsamsung #M+ #rubellcollection #architecture #design #interiordesign #fashion #urban #urbanliving #modernization #luxury #line #color #abstraction #realestatedevelopment

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Liu Wei (劉韡): “Sandwiches No. 13” (oil on canvas, 2015)

Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu Wei (劉韡) graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou in 1996.

Lehmann Maupin describes 劉韡‘s work:

Liu Wei “explores 21st century socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of contemporary society and the transformation of developing cities and the urban landscape.

“In many of his sculptural and installation works, he uses found materials that are re-contextualized to draw new meanings out of the materials from which they are made.”

Liu Wei’s works are exhibited and collected globally. Institutional and private collectors include Seoul’s Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (리움 삼성미술관); the M+ Museum for Visual Culture in Hong Kong; and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.

As you research Mr. Liu’s work, examine his entire œuvre. This work documents an eye and sense for the universal appeal of line, color, and composition.

Lehmann Maupin will highlight Liu Wei and his work during next week’s Art Basel in Basel 2018.

Look for the extraordinary “Library V-II” (books, wood, and iron) of 2015-2018.

Lehmann Maupin, by the way, with a gallery in both Manhattan and Hong Kong and a space in Seoul that is open by appointment, is doing superb work.

See: Liu Wei, Lehmann Maupin

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Gutai masterpiece ・ Sadamasa Motonaga’s “Work 145” of 1964

Art Basel opens in Switzerland next week.

London-based Alexandre Carel, former Christie’s Paris wunderkind, Stanford MBA, summer intern in real estate at New York-based, global investment firm KKR (Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts; KKR manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit and, through its strategic partners, hedge funds),

and Paris-based gallery Natalie Seroussi are collaborating to curate a booth

exploring post-war Asian and European abstraction.

Carel and Seroussi’s catalogue “Lands of Abstraction,” prepared for their Art Basel joint exhibition, explores abstract movements that arose almost simultaneously in Asia, Europe, and the United States – all of which “matured in parallel to one another.”

Among the many masterpieces on view will be Sadamasa Motonaga’s almost nine-foot “Work 145” of 1964. Asking price: $5 million.

Sadamasa Motonaga (元永 定正, 1922-2011) was a founding member of Japan’s Gutai Art Association (1954-1972).

His “Work 145” of 1964, last shown in New York at the Guggenheim Museum during the 2013 exhibition “Gutai: Splendid Playground,” reflects Gutai’s deep connection to nature, the process of art making, and life-affirming rationale

Carel and Seroussi write:

“Literally translated as ‘concreteness,’ Gutai’s intention was to impart life to matter and reach pure creativity.

“To artists such as Sadamasa Motonaga …, this goal could only be attained by way of a deep connection between the artist’s hand and his spirit.”

See:

  1. “Massive Motonaga Stars at Carel & Seroussi Booth at Art Basel,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 5 June 2018;
  2. 2) “Lands of Abstraction,” Natalie Seroussi Galerie, Paris & Alexandre Carel, London, Art Basel Highlights, June 2018

 

 

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Henri Matisse: “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (oil on canvas, 1913)

Dear to the heart and collection of Frankfurt, Germany’s Städel Museum, Henri Matisse painted “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (“Blumen und Keramik”) using oil on canvas in 1913.

While lovely to our eyes now, Matisse was then not only enjoying color but also experimenting with radically new, in the European aesthetic, perspectives, some well-practiced and well-received in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Japan, and making their way into Europe via trade.

Like Picasso and Braque and their contemporaneous alignment of reduced objects into a shallow space using multiple vantage points (“cubism”), Matisse renders objects placed in close proximity to each other from different vantage points and perspectives.

The flowers are painted as viewed from a side perspective. The ceramic plate is painted as viewed from above.

As the Städel Museum points out:

“This new form of beauty gives preference to the surface over spatial depth and was highly controversial at the time.

“That means the end of the spatial illusionism European painters had worked so hard to perfect over many centuries.”

 

See: “Henri Matisse: Flowers and Ceramic Plate,” 1913 (oil on canvas), Städel Museum

 

 

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Christopher Wool: “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001, detail)

Detail of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001).

J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the Blackstone Group who manages its hedge fund business, is the first American private collector to display his works of contemporary art in Asia.

“Christopher Wool: Highlights from the Hill Art Collection” opened during Art Basel Hong Kong in Central District’s H Queens, the new skyscraper designed by William Lim’s Hong Kong-based CL3 architectural practice and custom-built to house art galleries.

The exhibition, on view from March 27 through April 8, was produced by Hong Kong-based advisor Alexandre Errera.

While Mr. Hill ordinarily does not attend art fairs (dealers call him with works of interest instead), he did make it to Art Basel Hong Kong this spring for the opening of his exhibition of the works of Christoper Hill.

Following Hong Kong, Mr. Hill and his daughter left for Beijing to visit the studios of the about 15 artists there whose works he collects. Mr. Hill collects, for instance, works of Liu Wei. (See my post of yesterday regarding Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” of 2008).

Asked about the attraction of Chinese art now, Mr. Hill observes:

“Let’s go back to the different collections that we have,

“which is Renaissance bronzes, old master paintings, a dozen post-World War II artists, and now emerging artists.

“They all have one thing in common: At the moment that the art was created, the country of origin was going through a massive series of changes.

“China, in my mind, is going through the same thing now.

“And so I said, ‘I want to be educated.'”

 

See: 1) “J. Tomilson Hill on the Attraction of Contemporary Art,” Ted Lois, The New York Times, 26 March 2018; 2) “J. Tomilson Hill is Giving Asia Its First Christopher Wool Show in Over a Decade,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 27 March 2018

 

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Liu Wei: “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008)

Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008).

Liu Wei regenerates various segments of Beijing’s high-rise buildings into digitalized geometric structures of bright hues of pinks, yellows, blues, and greens.

The image was rendered digitally on a computer and then painted onto a larger canvas.

While modern and “digital,” Liu Wei connects with, while seeking to re-explore, more traditional landscape painting. Note the moon and the pine tree, traditional motifs.

Liu Wei, born in Beijing in 1972, is one of China’s leading contemporary artists. He lives and works in Beijing and is represented by Lehmann Maupin.

Rather than “subversively reference politics,” he often looks for inspiration in found objects and architectural constructions, expressing his views of a changing material landscape.

Liu Wei’s work is included in numerous collections such as the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney.

Lehmann Maupin

 

See: 1) Phillips “20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale,” Lot 36, Hong Kong, 27 May 2018 2) Lehmann Maupin

#liuwei #art #artmarket #contemporaryart #arthistory #digitalart #tech #entrepreneur #collection #portfolio #architecture #design #realestatedevelopment #luxury #urban #landscape #china #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #newyork #losangeles #miami #london #paris #berlin #oslo #zurich #vienna #milan #dubai

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Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (2006)

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (oil and enamel on canvas in an antiquated frame with gilded ornament) of 2006.

A young man in contemporary street-wear straddles the cross on which he will die. The unusual cross is associated with St. Andrew, a disciple of Christ who was executed for refusing to renounce his faith.

Kehinde Wiley poses his contemporary St. Andrew against rich brocade that comes to life as it winds over the figure.

The subject is painted in a powerful and dramatic Baroque style in strong contrast to the flat background.

Kehinde Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, now lives and works in New York. He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and his MFA from Yale in 2001.

Represented by New York gallerist Sean Kelly, Wiley “has firmly situated himself within art history’s portrait painting tradition.

“As a contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, among others,

“Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, majestic, and the sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world.”

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew,” a museum purchase of 2014, is now in the collection of Norfolk, Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art.

 

#kehindewiley #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #oldmasters #portrait #obama #losangeles #newyork #nigeria #africa #berlin #oslo #london #zurich #milan #dubai #hongkong #shanghai #seoul #tokyo #jakarta #luxury #design #architecture #realestatedevelopment #collection #portfolio #seankelly #chryslermuseum

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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017

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private museums | Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet

The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned contemporary art museum in Oslo, Norway. The museum was funded by two philanthropic organizations, the Thomas Fearnley Foundation and the Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation, that merged in 1995 to form the Thomas Fearnley, Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation.

Established and opened to the public in 1993, the museum moved into two new buildings in 2012.

The two new buildings, located in the Tjuvholmen skulpturpark along the banks of the Oslofjord in the center of Oslo, are designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano (who also designed New York’s new Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland).

The collecting focus of the museum is Norwegian and international contemporary art. Artists represented include Olafur Eliasson, Francis Bacon, Janine Antoni, Dan Colen, Cao Fei, Olav Christoper Jenssen, Elmgreen & Dragset, Jeff Koons, Fischli & Weiss, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Torbjørn Rødland, Matthew Ronay, Cindy Sherman, and Christopher Wool.

See:

Astrup Fearnley Museet, www.afmuseet.no/en/hjem;

“Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norge,” GoNorway

 

#art #artmarket #contemporaryart #museums #privatemuseums #collection #collector #dancolen #olavchristopherjenssen #christopherwool #torbjørnrødland #francisbacon #signarpolke #gerhardrichter #astrupfearnley #astrupfearnleymuseet #oslo #norway #renzopiano #architecture #design #engineering #whitneymuseum #whitney #lacma #centrepompidou #fondationbeyeler #newyork #paris #losangeles #riehen #hongkong #luxury #realestate #philanthropy