Hao Shiming - solo exhibition Gallery: Art Scene Classic June 1 - June 12, 2008
2/F, Bldg No 4, 50 Moganshan Road
Using the traditional medium of Chinese ink, Hao Shiming employs delicate brush strokes on silk paper. He uses earth tones and juxtaposes traditional Chinese motifs of blossoms and birds and women dressed in modern clothing in various intimate settings and poses. His work is unique yet he remains loyal to the classical Chinese painting style. There is a contemporary approach which makes his work very refreshing and his subject matter very curious.
Zhang Zhen - solo exhibition Gallery: Art Scene Warehouse June 7 - June 20, 2008 2/F, Bldg No 4, 50 Moganshan Road
Zhang Zhen was selected in 2007 as one of China’s top 25 emerging artists by a prestigious panel of art critics, including the curator of the Asian Art Museum in the USA, Jeff Kelley, and the director of Art Cologne, Gerard Goodrow. Zhang's paintings are private and sensual, yet magically dreamlike at the same time. The most striking and unique element of Zhang’s paintings is the strong, bright pink and fuschia-coloured highlights on the girls' bodies. These feminine colours are sometime painted so strongly, that they almost over-power the figures themselves. The result is that, when observing the paintings closely, the figures appear to be glowing, as if there is a powerful light or heat source just on the outside of the frame of the paintings, and the glowing colour becomes the reflection of the blood and flesh tones beneath the figures’ skin. Or it could be that the figures are glowing from within. With a gradated blue background, Zhang’s female figures appear as if suspended in the sky; their closed eyes may indicate that they are dreaming of floating. Some of Zhang Zhen’s painting have spherical shapes, which could be balloons suspended near the figures - their pink-purple colour scheme on one end, makes them look peach-like and sensual.
