SHANGHAI WORKS OF DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, XIANG LIQING AND HU JIA CHEN
Damien Deroubaix, World Downfall, Part 3, 2010
Xiang Liqing, OT
Shanghai works of Damien Deroubaix, Xiang Liqing and Hu Jia Chen
THURSDAY, MAY 27th, 2010, 6-10 pm
88 Xinyu Lu, entrance over the bridge, next to Metroline-2-Stop Beixinjing
PHONE: 137 6427 1314
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French artist Damien Deroubaix opens his temporary studio in Shanghai for one night, showing the works—two sculptures and one drawing—realized this month for the French pavilion at the EXPO. Shanghai based artists Xiang Liqing and Hu Jia Chen are joining the spontaneous exhibition with photographs and sculpture.
Due to the tenth anniversary of the renowned Prix Marcel Duchamp for contemporary art in France, the latest four nominees will be shown from the 3rd of June onwards at the French pavilion. Damien Deroubaix was the only one to come to Shanghai for one month to create his works in China. Transforming his temporary studio into an exhibition space for one night, he juxtaposes his new ensemble of two resin sculptures, Archipels, 2010, and a large format drawing, World Downfall Part. 3, 2010, with works from Shanghai based artists. This allows him to present his oeuvre also to the local art community.
With his work, Damien Deroubaix unveils the dark sides of consumerism and marketing—in short, the Western social system—in a raw punk-metal aesthetic that subverts advertising strategies. In sculptures, drawings, collages, and large-format watercolors, Deroubaix processes current political and social themes in a collage-like sign language, for which he recruits skeletons and skulls, soldiers and carnivorous animals, idols and advertising models—and raises them to the level of icons. Inspired by Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, and Francis Bacon as well as by Grindcore and Death Metal Bands, the 38-year-old creates a surrealistic theater whose stage is fringed with barbed wire and surveillance cameras and remains dark despite all the light bulbs, spotlights, and sun disks.
Damien Deroubaix, born in 1972 in Lille, France, lives and works in Berlin. His work has been shown in exhibitions all over Europe, as well as in group shows in New York and Los Angeles. He is represented by the Galerie InSitu – fabienne leclerc, Paris/France, and Nosbaum & Reding Gallery, Luxembourg.
Xiang Liqing is a Chinese artist who examines carefully the transformations of contemporary China. Dealing with existential topics, however, his humorous and poetic work reaches beyond the Chinese situation they are born of. The city and it’s architecture, the social context, and the relation between the individual and the collective belong to his favorite themes, which he approaches through different media: painting, photography, sculpture and installations. In his photographs Xiang Liqing creates surrealistic moments and captures the concerns of modern life in a quiet, sometimes melancholic way, which is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but leaves the interpretation up to the viewer.
Xiang Liqing, born in 1973, lives and works in Shanghai. His work has been shown in France, Germany, Italy and the United States. He is represented by ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai/Beijing.
Hu Jia Chen is a young Chinese artist, who is above all working with sculpture.
Hu Jia Chen, born in 1984 in Shanghai, China, lives and works in Shanghai.
THANKS to Qian Jing, the French pavilion, Li Pei Wei, Wei Kai and Eike Stratmann
ORGANIZED by Conny Becker
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