CHINA ART NOW

CHINA ART NOW

By Giacomo Fanale

Palazzo Sant’Elia – Palermo

22-29 March 2019

The visit of the President of the People’s Republic of China XiJinping  to Palermo offers an opportunity to get in touch with the contemporary art of China, but at the same time also a preview of the great exhibition that will be hosted on the occasion of the VIII edition of the  Week of Cultures  at the  Sant’Elia Foundation .

The “CHINA ART NOW” exhibition, staged in the Cavallerizza premises and curated by  Giacomo Fanale in collaboration with the Foreign Commissioner of the Beijing Biennale  Vincenzo Sanfo , is a two-man show that compares the pop paintings of  Xu De Qi  and the sculptures of  Zhang Hongmei , two of the ten Chinese artists invited to the largest exhibition in May and also present at the next Venice Biennale.

The exhibition – which confirms Palermo as an international art center and expression of Cultures – will be an in-depth showcase that will allow us to compare the acquired experiments in western contemporary art with the new trends and experiments of China which manages to question even the most extreme Western artistic tendencies.

XU DE QI was born in 1964 in Jinan (Shandong, China), he studied at the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts and at the Shandong Normal University, where he has been teaching since 1991. He has been invited to exhibit in various European cities such as Berlin and Paris , including the II Biennial of Sabbioneta (2010) with a personal room and the collective exhibition “Stemperando” in Rome and Turin. In 2011 in Miami he brought his personal “China flower” to the Kavachnina Art Gallery. The same year he exhibited at the Italian Consulate in Shanghai and in Mexico City at the Sebastian Foundation. In 2012 he took part in the “2012 London Olympic Fine Arts”, a group show that London organizes on the occasion of the Olympic Games. In 2014 XU DE QI is the protagonist in Jinan of “New works” at the He He Art Gallery, “Color of China” at the National Art Museum in Hohot.

In 2015 he exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale in the collective “Friendship Project”, in collaboration between the Republic of San Marino and the People’s Republic of China: during this exhibition he began his collaboration with the Chinese sculptor Zhang Hongmei with whom in 2016 he signed the Studiolo gallery in Milan “Xu De Qi and Zhang Hong Mei | Dialogues on art”. 2017 in the Republic of San Marino proposes the personal exhibition “XU DE QI | Life, faces, memory of China”. 2018 begins with a personal exhibition at the Madeinartgallery in Milan; in April he will exhibit one of his installations at the Asia Design Week pavilion in Milan.

ZHANG HONGMEI  Born in 1973 in Shandong Province, Peng Lai, Zhang Hongmei graduated in Textile Design at the Shangdong Academy of Fine Arts, then followed a course at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. You teach and exhibit, live and work in Jinan. Her debut in the world of art was in 2000, when her works “Barchetta” and “Tessuti” were selected and exhibited at the “International Upholstery Art Biennial” in Beijing.

In the last year he exhibited his “Urban Colors and Xi’an Warriors” in the courtyard of the Rectorate, University of Turin and presented the solo show “MentalLandscapes” at the Pirra gallery, in Turin where he returned for the second year in a row. In previous years you have exhibited at the Shandong Museum in Jinan Shandong; very present in Milan in 2017: at the Made in Art Gallery, at the MIA Photo Fair, at the Studiolo gallery, and at the “Scuola Orafa”, as well as having proposed her artistic installation at the University of Turin. And again, the 13th GOTHA International Biennial of Antiques, in Parma, Spring City, “Woman Outstandingfemalerole model of the year”, in Jinan and in Tingzhou, Weifang. Solo and group exhibitions in Bangkok, Paris, Madrid, Beijing, Mexico City. Exhibition on the occasion of the 56th Venice International Art Biennale,

Vernissage: 22 March, 5.00 p