Visionaries: The Special Project for MSAC 10th Anniversary I

Visionaries gather artists from the East and the West, across wide range of generations, including the heavyweight contemporary realist painter Antonio López GARCÍA (b. 1936-), the German art master Anselm KIEFER (b. 1945-), the internationally high-profile middle-age artist Anri SALA (b.1974-), the young emerging Portuguese artist João GABRIEL and the well-received contemporary artists in Asia: LIANG Shaoji, CHEN Yujun, SUN Xun, YU Ji, LIN Aojie, Shinji OHMAKI, Marina CRUZ, and Nona GARCIA. Half of the works on display are loans from collectors who have collaborated with MSAC on the long-term basis; the other half is the selects from the gallery art collection. There will be paintings, installations, sculptures, videos and mixed media, various materials and forms involved.

Being the major role in contemporary realistic painting, Antonio López García launches revolutionary reformations on the Realism traditions with his drawing, oil work and sculpture. That not merely embodied through the artist’s extraordinary realistic technique but more importantly by approaches of observation and painting from life, with the absorption in delineation, he creates imagery of profound spiritual reference and magical appealing to our emotions. The variations of hue and saturation reflecting the alternation of four seasons in his oil works infuse the time as well as liquidity into seemingly still pictures, which has made an unprecedented accomplishment. Compared to López who spends his whole life in the hometown making art to address the love for his families, friends and the motherland, Anselm KIEFER born two months before Germany’s official surrender is meant to spend his lifetime on reflecting historical wounds from the Wars and remind us of the human being’s destiny and mundane tragedy with his epiclike artworks. 

Born in the same year as KIEFER, LIANG Shaoji combines art and disciplines. He often uses the lifespan of silkworms as materials. His artworks deeply associated with Taoism, repeatedly questioning the origins of life and death. As opposed to mentioned established artists, the emerging and middle-age artists taken part in this exhibition apparently tend to express themselves or trace the individual’s life path. The art of João GABRIEL, Marina CRUZ and CHEN Yujun probes into identity, recollection and reviving family memory, and the excavation of hometown history. Anri SALA, SUN Xun and Nona GARCIA render images with forms of video, animation, and woodcut to compose the chapters of poetry in monochrome tone. Flesh in Stone by YU Ji and Echoes-Crystallization by Shinji OHMAKI make a breakthrough in terms of material processing in the sculpture traditions. That evokes the dialogue with space and reinterpretation of form, which founds an innovative future for traditional dimensional works.