ART-PRESENTATION: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth
The exhibition “Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth” features the work of five leading young contemporary women artists from China. This collaborative presentation continues Pace’s mission of cultivating and supporting artists within a global context, offering a platform to highlight the compelling visual achievements of a new younger generation of artists working in Asia today.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive
The premise of the exhibition “Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth” aligns the individual practice of each artist with one of the Five Elements, an important theory in ancient Chinese philosophy that emphasizes the idea of “wholeness” and illustrates the interconnected relationships between the phenomena of the natural world: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. The curatorial premise proposes that the Five Elements, respectively, represent the five young artists and uses the philosophical concept as a lens to interpret their innovative and distinct aesthetic styles: Cui Jie (“Metal”), Yang (“Wood), Li (“Water”), Zhang Zipiao (“Fire”), and Zhang Ruyi (“Earth”). Cui Jie is known for her paintings that capture the different architectural styles of the rapid urbanization of China’s built environments, continuously shifting and transforming in a process of modernization and innovation. Her interest in the history of architecture and the structures of modernism resonate in her work. In “Swan Swirl Chair #2” (2020), Cui references the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, who designed the Swan Chair in 1956 for the SAS Royal Hotel. Set against a pink and black ground, the mid-century chair intersects with a swirling, futuristic cosmic steel sculpture. Yang Bodu’s work explores the interaction between spaces. The subject of her painting is often museums or art galleries, and the relationships that exist between the artwork and the audience within them. In “Legend of the Mountain” or “In the Museum 2021 May” (both 2021), Yang creates imagined environments and isolated spaces, fabricated from memories that are at once familiar and trigger the unconscious mind. Her luminous, wistful atmospheres stretch out like trees: pensive, expansive, and still, and the spaces she creates explore the subtlety and tension between looking and being. Li Shurui’s work examines the dynamics of light and color, and the meaning behind these terms, exploring the multifaceted ideas they signify within a cultural and political context. Making Up for “Lost Spring No. 49” (2021) features a canvas in the form of a flower, painted in luminescent shades of green and purple. Similarly, “Making Up for Lost Spring No. 50” (2021) features a diagonal gradation of hues in soft purple and blue, exemplifying the artist’s ongoing exploration of color systems. Employing a highly personal and creative approach, Li’s practice harnesses a fluidity, like a stream of water that immerses and engages the viewer in the emotive impressions that her work leaves behind. A highlight of the exhibition are Zhang Zipiao’s paintings, which are influenced by the culture of social media and employ bold, gestural brushstrokes to create flaming, full-bodied, and rich images charged with emotion. The budding blooms of Zhang’s large-scale “Peony” paintings (2020-21) are vibrant and lush. Deep magenta meets translucent layers of bubblegum pink, mesmerizing neon green strokes, and wisps of violet that fade to black. Her flowers are palpable and evoke physical bodily sensations such as organs and flesh. Her brush challenges the organic shape of her forms, which teeter on the brink between vulnerability and violence. Lastly, Zhang Ruyi’s conceptual practice is rooted in the everyday and employs the mundane and the trivial to explore a tension between nature and urban development, architecture and technology, the individual and industrialized society. Her sculptures of potted plants and planters use concrete, a construction material, which she casts into pigmented forms, such as cacti in earthen hues of red, blue, and gray. In her mixed media works, the artist arranges the basic shapes of circles, triangles, or squares in intentional ways to manifest a sophisticated rationality as solid and as calm as the earth.
Participating Artists: Cui Jie, Yang Bodu, Li Shurui, Zhang Zipiao, and Zhang Ruyi.
Photo: Li Shurui, Making Up for Lost Spring No. 49, 2021, acrylic on canvas over board, 31-1/2″ (80 cm), flower, diameter, 15-9/16″ × 8-11/16″ (39.5 cm × 22.1 cm), 5 petals, length by width, each © Li Shurui, courtesy Pace Gallery and WHITE SPACE BEIJING
Info: Curator: Michael Xufu Huang, Pace Gallery, 229 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA, USA, Duration: 14/7-21/8/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-17:00, www.pacegallery.com
