Art News

“Galaxy “ is an exhibition celebrating Li Xinhui’s 20 years of painting the stars. Born into a family of literati, Li has loved painting stars since childhood.

“I still believed the answers to every single question reside in each flickering star. Every time I took a stick or a rock and drew stars on the red mud, or white sand, on purple cliffs or on cement floors, the mysterious and serene stars would give me a feeling of peace and security. Placing myself within them, it seems I also became serene and transparent,” Li said.

This exhibition presents two series of Li Xinhui’s early works, one of which happened to coincide with the turning period in China’s art scene when high art met rebellion, while the other discusses the relationship between individuals and the collective. 

This exhibition from multi-disciplinary artist, Zhang Lehua, is based on the famous movie from the 1980s, “Romance on Lushan Mountain”. Having scaled the famed peak twice, Zhang has developed something of an obsession with the mountain and has created a number of paintings, photographs and videos based on its scenery and feeling.

Being Zhang Lehua, there is a mischievous element
to the work, with traditional forms and established rules inverted and ignored much of the time. One video work recreates scenes from the movie with a comedic bent, while scenery is etched into a steel ball, which is then heated and applied to surfaces to recreate the original image. 

Prune Nourry is a multi- disciplinary artist from France who has been preoccupied throughout her career with biotech and genetic evolution, particularly from a female perspective.

Nourry’s most recent series, “Terracotta Daughters”, is composed by 108 life size sculptures that bear a striking resemblance to Xi’an’s famous Terracotta Soldiers, which are referenced not only in form, but also in a technical sense, with all sculptures made in collaboration with Chinese craftsmen who practice ancient molding technologies and make their living crafting reproductions of the soldiers.

These figures, however, are not soldiers; they are actually 108 young girls who had their facial features artificially cross-paired from eight Chinese girls the artist found in local orphanages. Through the depictions of these manufactured girl figures, Nourry aims to provoke a discussion about woman’s social status.