ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair: Artists: Killion Huang, Lingrou Xie, Mustafa Boga, Zhou Hao, Wenjie Yu, Yunchun Wang, Joyce Chonghui Wu, and Holden Willard

  

Nan Ke Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2025, presenting a group exhibition at Booth W01 featuring works by eight represented and associated artists: Killion Huang, Lingrou Xie, Mustafa Boga, Zhou Hao, Wenjie Yu, Yunchun Wang, Joyce Chonghui Wu, and Holden Willard.

 

The booth is curated around the theme of “The Golden Age,” evoking two emblematic periods in modern history—the Belle Époque of late 19th-century Europe and the Roaring Twenties of the early 20th century—through geometric floor tiles, a central fireplace, ornamental plaster lines, and lush indoor greenery. The display pays homage to the aesthetics and temperament of these eras. Elements of Art Nouveau, which bridged these two historical moments, also resonate throughout the installation.

 

 

 

Amid the fervor of industrial revolutions, the Arts and Crafts movement arose as a form of resistance to mass production through the power of handmade creation, which in turn fostered a new industrial aesthetic merging craftsmanship and machinery—most notably embodied in Art Deco.

 

 Killion Huang

34-Degree Heater, 2025

180h x 150w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

At the center of the booth stands a large-scale new painting by Killion Huang, suffused with the warm tones of sunlight caressing the human form at day’s end. His work captures the “golden hour” — the tender and chaotic interlude before nightfall. This year, Huang has deepened his exploration of pictorial structure, dividing his compositions through the natural geometry of walls, tables, and window frames, or positioning his figures frontally and symmetrically, creating a sense of theatricality born from everyday life.

 

O.1612154-2, 2016

126h x 88w cm

© Courtesy of the artist and MUD Gallery

 

Printed fabric, acrylic & pastel on canvas, metal brackets

120h x 60w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

Framed by the fireplace, Zhou Hao’s works combine design paradigms and the ritual of craftsmanship. Having lived in Japan, Zhou absorbed both the dense energy of metropolitan life and the rigor and lyricism of East Asian aesthetics, translating them into expressive linear forms that evoke a human-made yet poetic naturalism. In dialogue across the space, Joyce Chonghui Wu’s works on the opposite pillar employ layered textiles and stitches to construct tactile depth. With her background in fashion design, Wu integrates compositional precision and chromatic geometry into painterly surfaces, while photographic prints capture vivid, incidental moments discovered in the city’s overlooked corners, reflecting her fascination with the artificial object.

 

130h x 100w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

Lingrou Xie’s practice reveals a similarly stratified logic. Focusing on the condition of contemporary women, her paintings juxtapose finely rendered florals and objects—delicate yet resilient—with clearly contoured female portraits beneath, evoking parallel realities or glimpses of truth. Fragile sorrow and defiant vitality overlap here, forming an intimate portrait of our times.

 

130h x 107w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

Occupying the center of the fireplace, Yunchun Wang’s paintings channel the dreamlike lyricism of Art Nouveau. Through the collision of geometric color fields, she constructs plantlike and symbolic forms infused with surreal spirituality. Her gentle yet precise brushwork portrays the lunar cycle descending into eyelashes and pupils, mapping the fluid pathways of thought.

 

Cotton cloth, linen, elastic fabric, cotton sewing thread, sand, soft pastel, resin and wood paint

106h x 160w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

62h x 72w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

Opposite, works by Wenjie Yu and Mustafa Boga present blossoms born from different soils—echoing, reflecting, and intertwining the narratives of the Golden Age. Yu continues her exploration of the theme of “Linger,” constructing dynamic painterly terrains where loose, earthen brushstrokes nurture the sharp bloom of edges above. Boga, in contrast, employs hand embroidery to create flat, striking compositions, using dense stitching to evoke intimacy and slowness—a gentle resistance against the ephemerality of digital culture.

 

61h x 51w cm

© Courtesy of the artist

 

In Holden Willard’s paintings, memory takes on a luminous sincerity. The natural and emotional landscapes of Portland reappear in his work through shifting light, transforming shadowed tones into radiant golden hues—a visual reconstruction of remembrance itself.

 

The two “Golden Ages” in their narrow historical sense have long passed, yet they remain nostalgically yearned for. Like the story of Midnight in Paris, we find ourselves longing to return—to the “past,” or even “further past.” And yet, desire, anticipation, and the emergence of the new continue today, glimmering in the same golden light. Amid the turbulence of information, technological mutation, and shifting discourse, art carries forward its enduring power of resistance—through the tactile presence of the handmade and the speculative force of imagination—persisting in writing the luminous chapters of our present moment.

 

Text by Roxane Fu