ART CITIES:Tokyo-Xu Ning

In her practice, Xu Ning has been greatly influenced by her encounters and discoveries of matters that transcend time, national borders, and genres, from the ancient thoughts of her native China, to the true to life reality of Netherlandish painting such as the works of Jan van Eyck, the decorativeness and innovation of Dolce & Gabbana’s fashion, the beauty of nature, and the ephemerality of life.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Tomio Koyama Gallery Archive

Xu Ning was born in 1979, in Beijing, China. She moved to Japan with her family in 2006 after graduating with a degree in oil painting from Capital Normal University in Beijing, and completed her doctoral degree program in painting at Tama Art University Graduate School in 2020. In the same year she was awarded the Grand Prix of Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2020. She currently lives and works in the Kanagawa prefecture. Xu Ning in her solo exhibition “WORLD” presents 14 ceramic panels produced during the artist’s three-month residency at CREARE Atami-Yugawara Studio last year when she was invited to take part in the Traffic Culture Exhibition 2021. The artist says for the works in the exhibition:
“I titled the work presented in the Traffic Culture Exhibition, “WORLD.” By world I do not mean it as pertaining to a particular individual, but the world of humanity as a whole –the world of coexistence and mutual prosperity. My goal is to contribute to this world through painting”. Making use of all the various parts that resulted from the creation of her first-ever ceramic panels as materials for her work, Xu Ning’s attitude towards production, paired with her strong intent, captures the beautiful things that by chance have manifested from nature, and incorporates them into her work to evoke a further sense of enrichment. Visitors are invited to explore the appeal of the artist’s work in both its entirety and meticulously executed details. Xu’s work illustrate her painstaking precision of painting fields of color and lines one by one upon a large canvas using a fine-point brush (a brush with an extremely thin and elongated tip). At the same time, she enables the coexistence of fortuity created through the splashing and dripping of paint, which together with the vividness of her palette as well as the contrast between the textured areas and flat white spaces, serve to generate a sense of dynamism and vigor.

Photo: Xu Ning, Star, Sky 2021, Ceramic and paint on board h.94.1 x w.88.0 x d.7.8 cm, ©︎ Xu Ning, Courtesy the artist and Tomio Koyama Gallery

Info: Tomio Koyama Gallery, Terrada Art Complex Ⅰ 4F, 1-33-10, Higashi-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan, Duration: 5-26/3/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, http://tomiokoyamagallery.com