Killion Huang 黄加煜, Meditate Before the Tsunami 在海啸来临前冥想, 2024
Nan Ke Gallery is pleased to announce its return to the 2024 ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, presenting works by six emerging young artists at Booth W01. The curatorial direction of the booth will be "Shanghai Living Room in the 90s". The 90's in Shanghai was a beautiful and visionary era, and the booth will use a lot of wood finishes to recreate the old houses that a generation of people lived in as children, hoping to take the audience back to that gentle and powerful period.
Nan Ke's booth W01 will present two exhibition programmes: the Collectors' Preview Day (11.7 - 11.8) will feature paintings by Killion Huang, Xiaochi Dong and Holden Willard, while the Public Day (11.9 - 11.10) will present a group exhibition of female artists Mengfan Bai, Xueqing Zhu and Yunchun Wang. Killion Huang recreates elements of Shanghai life in a colourful and intense painting style, such as the steel windows and sycamore trees in his images; Xiaochi Dong grew up in Shanghai, and his delicate creative language is rooted in classical Chinese painting. The paintings of Mengfan Bai, Xueqing Zhu and Yunchun Wang can also give a glimpse of the city's gentle imprint on their lives.
/ Killion Huang
Killion Huang
Wild Fire, 2024
Oil on canvas
100h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Killion Huang received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2022. From older masters such as Matisse and Bonnard to contemporary artists such as Luis Frattino and Oscar I. Hau, Killion's work is heavily influenced by different artistic veins, reflecting a connection to a more macroscopic history of art and contemporary cool culture.
Through his nuanced portraits and reflective compositions, Killion seeks to provide a platform for long marginalised voices, inviting the viewer to engage with the emotional and social landscapes of his subjects. His work not only reflects a community, but also emphasises its presence and challenges the silence surrounding it. killion Huang's work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and is held in private and public collections, including the X Museum in Beijing, China.
/ Xiaochi Dong
Xiaochi Dong
Through the veils of sea mist, 2024
Ink, acrylic, volcanic clay powder on linen
160h x 130w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Xiaochi Dong's practice is based on classical Chinese painting and explores the experimental logic of contemporary painting, resulting in works with visual characteristics that reconcile different aesthetic traditions. The artist draws inspiration from man-made landscapes at different scales - classical gardens, modern botanical gardens, and miniature eco-tanks - and explores different concepts of simulation, imitation, and compression of nature. Dong Xiaochi's work mainly involves painting and integrated graphic works. By creating images that suggest light, humidity and atmosphere, the artist aims to give form to contemporary images of nature.
/ Holden Willard
Holdon Willard
Flowers for Quinn，2024
Oil on canvas
117h x 97w cm
© Courtesy of the artist and EDJI Gallery
Holden Willard's work deals primarily with the figure and its interactions in space. In his work, he considers the ebb and flow of each medium's process to determine the best way to understand and choose the medium. As an “observational artist” who remains responsive and open to natural outcomes - whether through color, shape, or special moments - Holden Willard explores the potential of time and place in the context of pictures. His depictions of loved ones and friends promise a sense of transition from childhood to adulthood to create and document past adventures with strong nostalgic overtones.
/ Mengfan Bai
Mengfan BaiCrescent St 18:52，2024
Oil on canvas
160h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Mengfan Bai's artistic creations are a fusion of Western realism and classical Chinese aesthetics, resulting in a unique visual logic. She juxtaposes her creations with images of cultural and historical significance, or brings together images from different times and spaces to create a dialogue of visual elements across time and space. By interweaving past and present, here and elsewhere, Bai Mengfan's artistic creations aim to transcend the limitations of time and space, and construct her image world with a new aesthetic order. In her visual universe, different temporal and spatial existences freely intersect like nebulae.
/ Xueqing Zhu
Xueqing Zhu
Choose a Heart Guest, 2024
Oil on canvas
110h x 130w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Xueqing Zhu's paintings are a fusion of Nordic Expressionism and the academic traditionsof classica Chinese painting, constructingintimate sensual reflections with absurd fairy-tale-like images. For Xueqing, "reality" is amajor characteristic of her works. However.this "reality" is at the same time subjectivepersonalised, and a blend of inspiration andcreativity. She tries to extract the truth fromvarious aspects to form an impression of hersensitivity to the construction ofthe environment.
"Most of my work is based on self-exploration and talking to myself. But they are by no means self-absorbed and selfish, I want them to make a connection from the small world to the big one. As a result they are transformations of myself: my memories, my dreams, my special feelings about things, my beautiful virtual visions, my pain, my depression, my confusion... But this is not my creative intention, the real creative intention is accidental, it is a moment of sensual fluctuation that introduces a desire to create a picture, which requires a moment of feeling that is sensitive enough to focus on, and that can be easily clarified in training, but of course such a moment of feeling is also based on the unique "I". During this period, it means to be sincere to the painting to the "I", deviating from the sincere state of the picture will become boring and ridiculous, I do not like the meaningless integration of the picture effect. The qualities that make me who I am, the self-exploration I mentioned earlier, are more like my creative tools and instruments, through which I can find the images I need more intimately and skilfully."
/ Yunchun Wang
Yunchun Wang
Close your eyes, 2024
Acrylic on wood panel
30h x 50w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Born in 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Yunchun Wang graduated from the College of Fine Arts of East China Normal University in 2024 and now lives and works in Shanghai. Her artistic practice draws inspiration from daily life, nature, literature and different cultural symbols, exploring subtle emotions and the complexity of the human spirit. Her works are based on memory, imagination and intuition, depicting mysterious and unfamiliar images in soft colours in an attempt to transcend the material world by transforming ineffable perceptions of reality into poetic visual images.
Text by Roxane Fu
