ART SG - 2024
Qi Zhuo, Fu Site, Shen Han
JAN 19th - JAN 21st, 2024
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore Booth - BE05
Qi Zhuo’s approach is grounded in the concept of cultural collision. The intersection of Chinese and Western cultures serves as a foundational element in their work, encompassing linguistic, historical, and traditional aspects in a playful approach.
« Using blown glass, the artist “restores” Buddhist statues erected during the five dynasties and ten reigns that marked the history of China (A.D. 907-960). […] Over the years, these figures gradually became detached from their original functions, haunting Zhuo Qi like ghosts. Indeed, for the artist, they have become a universal language or, more broadly, a metaphor for time and space, which he falsely restores using materials that are temporally and geographically distant. […]
Through his works, Zhuo Qi lowers the barrier between the sacred and the profane, blending notions of reverence and irreverence. »
— « Seeking triumph in defeat » – Text by Baiyu JU
Qi Zhuo was born in 1985 in Fuxin (Liaoning province, China). He graduated with honors from the Le Mans Higher School of Fine Arts (the DNSEP Diploma), did the post graduate program KAOLIN of the ENSA Limoges in France and the Geneva University of Art and Design in Switzerland, he has been working and living in France since 2008. He did a residency at the Fondation Martell in Cognac, France at the end of 2020.
Here Fu Site focuses on the individual form: clusters of different textures are interwoven, superimposed, interlocked and together they form an image that is difficult to define, similar to a sculpture or the body of a fictitious creature. By adding eyeballs, he gives the form an anthropomorphic and humorous quality.
Through his fictitious creatures and scenes, he attempts to take on the complex realities of the contemporary world, provoking discussions on the relationship between the organic and the inorganic, the abstract and the figurative, the borderline and the excessive, as well as philosophical reflections on the cosmos and what remains to be known.
Fu Site was born in the Liaoning province (China) in 1984. He graduated from the Tsinghua University in Beijing (2006), the École des Beaux-Arts in Versailles (2011) and the École Supérieure d’Art du Nord-Pas-de-Calais (2014). In 2013 he was awarded with the first Canson Prix Art School painting award.
Shen Han explores the relation between paint and the body by employing a combination of pigment stains, supple gestural lines, and suggestive spaces. The image presented appears to disintegrate and shift, reflecting the artist’s fascination with manipulating fragmented spaces and exploring the nuances between figuration and abstraction. This process organizes an imperceptible order within the apparent chaos.
The seemingly arbitrary pigment stains come together to create a harmonious quality and rhythm, albeit without explicit coherence. Executed with bold brushstrokes, the artist’s agile and graceful lines establish arbitrary relationships within the colourful composition.
The interwoven visual elements, embedded in ambiguous configurations and narratives, disclose profound emotions, presenting a paradoxical question that can be interpreted either as constructive or as delving into a realm of uncertainty.
Shen Han was born in 1988 in Hangzhou, China. He graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2017 with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. He was an exchange student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he now lives and works between Berlin and Hangzhou.