Out for Art @MO

Shanghai: Nov 15 — Nov 30 2019

During the Shanghai’s art filled November, the inspiring group exhibition at Mandarin Oriental Pudong Shanghai showcases a wide range of important works of 9 most celebrated contemporary artists across the globe, pairing the Minimalistic masterpieces with the international Pop superstars.

Sparking in the late 1950s from the United States were the Pop Art and Minimalism, two primary art movements that departed from the gestural and subjective nature of the previous generation of creative minds. Pop artists blurred the boundaries between “high” and “low” culture by creating art pieces of mass culture objects, media and political figures. Minimalism notably introduced highly simplified geometric forms, reductive serial compositions, and the use of unmodified materials and fabrication methods. Record- breaking artist Yoshitomo Nara has been blending high and low by combing the saturated color and scale of postwar abstract painting with a cast of cute but demonic cartoon toddlers since 1990s. Meanwhile, German artist GüntherFörg’s life-long career was centered around Modernism and Abstraction; his late paintings have challenged the formality of Minimalism.

More importantly, the exhibition creates another extraordinary dialogue between the world-famous hotel which a great number of people call “home” and the talented artists involved, unfolding a shared narrative of the hotel contemporary design, the modern art, and the oriental philosophies.  The Shanghai-born artist Hsiao Chin, is a key member of the Ton-Fan Art Group; with strong interests in the oriental aesthetics— in particular the ideas of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu —and the Western minimalistic art movements, the artist employs the vocabulary of traditional Chinese brush and the conceptual framework of American and European Modernism.

Installation View