Art Basel

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Art Basel Hong Kong 2015
Shi Xinji
Born in 1980 in Shangqiu, Henan Province, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China.
Shi Xinji is a significant voice within contemporary Chinese painting, who at an early stage in her career has
developed a remarkably varied practice. Spanning references to traditional techniques as well as more complex treatments of the Western artistic canon presented in a tone of ironic understatement. Her work remains
figurative in subject matter, but Shi’s bold experimentation with non-realistic colour and tonal inversions lends
her compositions a surreal and illusory quality.
Her recent works, including these works from the Series of Jiu Feng Mountain Landscape, engage in a rich interweaving of visual iconographies. The sparse branches of trees in a mountain landscape suggest the legacy
of earlier Song-dynasty painting, yet simultaneously the motif’s thick impasto oil treatment pushes it close to
the realm of abstraction.
Shi’s work has been exhibited in a solo exhibition at the CAN Art Centre (Beijing, China, 2007), as well as in
numerous group shows including at the Today Art Museum (Beijing, China, 2011), the V Art Centre (Shanghai,
China, 2011) and the Liu Haisu Art Museum (Shanghai, China, 2007). Her work was also shown at the 1st Xinjiang
International Arts Biennale in Xinjiang, China, in 2014.
(Top Left)
Title: Series of Jiu Feng Mountain
Landscape No. 1
Date: 2014
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Size: 26 x 18 cm
(Bottom Left)
Title: Series of Jiu Feng Mountain
Landscape No. 2
Date: 2014
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Size: 26 x 18 cm
(Top Right)
Title: Series of Jiu Feng Mountain
Landscape No. 3
Date: 2014
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Size: 26 x 18 cm
(Bottom Right)
Title: Series of Jiu Feng Mountain
Landscape No. 4
Date: 2014
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Size: 26 x 18 cm
contact @newartworld.co.uk
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Ugo Rondinone
Born in Brunnen, Switzerland, in 1964. Lives and works in New York.
Ugo Rondinone is one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, incorporating painting, sculpture, installation and performance into an artistic practice which may be seen as a wide-ranging address to the hypocrisies of contemporary society. His works frequently point towards elements of conflict or tension within
the fabric of ordinary life, which are evoked by, for example, employing live clown actors within the exhibition
space, or through the uncertain totemic energies of seemingly primitive stone forms.
Elfternovemberzweitausendundvierzehn belongs to Rondinone’s iconic series of ‘Cloud Paintings’, in which
a deceptively simple motif belies experimentation with a host of visual references. Drawing on the lineage of
both German romanticism and of church ceiling frescoes visualising the firmament, this work only suggests the
actual presence of the ‘cloud’ in faint white hue towards the bottom of the piece. Its seemingly inverted composition in which the cut-out form of the canvas’ upper edge echoes a simplified suggestion of a cloud form
gives the work a surrealistic irony: its motif is at once plainly apparent and concealed.
Ugo Rondinone has shown work extensively in solo exhibitions at international venues including the Wiener
Secession (Vienna, Austria, 2015), the Rockbund Museum (Shanghai, China, 2014), the Museum Anahuacalli
(Mexico City, Mexico, 2014) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA, 2013). His work has been shown at
group exhibitions at Swiss Institute Contemporary Art (New York, USA, 2015), the Kunstmuseum Luzern (Luzern, Switzerland, 2015), the Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels, Belgium, 2014) and the Arario Museum (Jeju,
South Korea, 2014) to name only a few. He has been collected by the MoMA (New York, USA), the New Museum
of Contemporary Art (New York, USA) and the Michael Ringier Collection (Geneva, Switzerland) among many
others. In 2013, Ugo Rondinone was commissioned to produce a major public installation for the Rockefeller
Center (New York, USA).
Title: elfternovemberzweitausendundvierzehn
Date: 2014
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 273.1 x 180.3 cm
contact @newartworld.co.uk
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Shintaro Miyake
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1970. Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
Shintaro Miyake’s boldly idiosyncratic sculptures and works on paper fuse a vibrant graphic line with subject
matter that occupies an uncertain space between ‘kawaii’ and more turbulent psychological undertones.
His colour pencil works incorporate references to popular culture, street signage and characters from anime
into the artist’s unique imaginative conceit, suggesting aesthetic parallels with his celebrated contemporary
Yoshitomo Nara.
Miyake’s recent practice is preoccupied with the tension between moments of violence within pop culture
stereotypes and a method of depicting them with innocent, even childlike hues of bright pencil on paper. The
densely-wrought works possess a vivid energy and wit, peopled with characters and often Japanese text on
the page in a reference to the visual iconography of manga comic books.
Shintaro Miyake has recently held solo shows at institutions including the Hillside Forum (Tokyo, Japan, 2014),
Metaphysical Art Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan, 2012), and the Art/Brut Center Gugging (Vienna, Austria, 2007). His
work has been featured in group exhibitions including at the Yokosuka Museum of Art (Kanagawa, Japan,
2014), the Kirishima Open-Air Museum (touring nationally, Japan, 2008) and at the Art Directors’ Club (New
York, USA, 2007). His work is held in prestigious collections internationally such as the Rubell Family Collection (Miami, USA), the Takahashi Collection (Hibiya, Japan), the JAPIGOZZI Collection (Geneva, Switzlernad),
and the collection of the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo, Norway).
(Top)
Title: Kill Bill
Date: 2014
Medium: Pencil, colour pencil,
acrylic on paper
Size: 32 x 34 cm
(Bottom)
Title: Predator
Date: 2014
Medium: Pencil, colour pencil,
acrylic on paper
Size: 32 x 34 cm
contact @newartworld.co.uk
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Agostino Bonalumi
Born in Milan, Italy, in 1935.
Agostino Bonalumi was a celebrated Italian painter, draughtsman and sculptor whom, together with Piero Manzoni
and Enrico Castellani, was one of the leading figures of post-WWII Italian avant-garde. Bonalumi’s expansive and
varied practice ranged from experimentation with the form of the canvas to working with audience-engagement
in pieces that pre-dated contemporary relational aesthetics. His avid interest in the nature of spatial representation would take him from sculpture to set design, and he is credited with artistic innovations that have shaped the
course of contemporary Western sculpture
Bronzo exemplifies the significance of Bonalumi’s sculptural achievements, consisting of an asymmetrical form
of cast bronze which translates an evocation of elegantly sparse architectonic space into a luminously shimmering object. The piece’s reflective surfaces multiply and distort the viewer’s experience of space, transforming the
work into a catalyst for new possibilities of visual awareness. The work appears self-effacingly minimal in aesthetic
and yet decadently jewel-like in tone, carving out three-dimensional volumes in space in sparely undulating lines.
Bonalumi’s prolific practice has been exhibited at solo shows at institutions including the Museo MARCA (Catanzaro, Italy, 2014), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow, Russia, 2011), and the Libreria Ferrarin (Legnago,
Italy, 2010). His work has been shown in group exhibitions including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New
York, USA, 2014), the Museum Ostwall (Dortmund, Germany, 2013) and the Pinacoteca de Brera (Milan, Italy, 2013).
His work is held in prestigious collections internationally including those of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
(Venice, Italy), the Hara Museum of Art (Tokyo, Japan), the Kunstmuseum Bonn (Bonn, Germany), the Palais des
Beaux Arts (Brussels, Belgium) and the Museum of Modern Art Fort Lauderdale (Florida, USA) to name only a few.
Title: Bronzo
Date: 1969-2007
Medium: Bronze casting
Size: 50 x 60 x 64 cm
contact @newartworld.co.uk
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Hugo McCloud
Born in 1980 in Palo Alto, California. Lives and works in New York.
Hugo McCloud is a process-based artist who utilizes a unique alchemical approach to transmute untraditional
materials into beautifully crafted pieces of art. His work questions the boundaries of aesthetic beauty, by coaxing out unique imagery from materials that would otherwise be deemed unusable or discarded. The artist
incorporates a chemical oxidation process that corrodes, contaminates and transforms, enabling his work to
amass a visually arresting oeuvre of paintings and objects.
Untitled (point of reference 1) epitomizes McCloud’s combination of urban architectural interests with a
desire to expand the material possibilities of his chosen media. Aluminium foil and oil paint are applied to tar
paper to forge a material surface that is at once aesthetically beautiful and a product of unconventional, industrial processes. The piece invites a re-examination of the distinction between art-making and physical labour,
pointing to the aesthetic qualities of the art creation process itself.
Hugo McCloud’s innovative and emergent practice has begun to receive international acclaim, due to open a
solo exhibition at the Arts Club (London, UK, 2015). He recently exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (Brooklyn, New York, 2013), and has a strong exhibition history in both New York and Italy.
Title: Untitled (point of reference 1)
Date: 2014
Medium: Aluminium foil, aluminium coating and oil paint on tar
Size: 182.9 x 162.6 cm
contact @newartworld.co.uk
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