Yves Klein Featured in Shanghai Exhibition The Challenging Souls

On view now in Shanghai at the Power Station of Art, The Challenging Souls is a unique exhibition featuring work by avant-garde artists Yves Klein, Lee Ufan, and Ding Yi. Coming from the different cultural backgrounds of east and west, these three artists polarize in their relentless pursuit of art through experimentation, innovation and exploration. Individually and collectively, they have invented new artistic languages, media, and art forms by challenging existing conventions and trends.

Yves Klein (1928-1962) represented the genius of the French avant-garde scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Lee Ufan (b. 1936) contributed a conceptual framework and practice to the Mono-ha (School of Things) movement of the late 1960s to early 1970s Japan, and was a keen advocate for the Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement that emerged in the 1970s in Korea. Ding Yi (b. 1962) has been known since the 1980s for his abstract paintings built up of crosses, a culmination of Chinese contemporary art following the cultural and political turmoil of the 1960s to 1970s.

This is the first time the works of Yves Klein and Lee Ufan have been shown in China together with their Chinese peer Ding Yi. This exhibition opens a new appraisal of avant-gardism in the second half of the 20th century–spanning seven decades and three generations. Through the framework of avant-gardism, these artists pioneered the use of unique materials, colors, and performative elements, bridging the rarified context of the avant-garde with the broader public. Coming from different cultures, periods, and locations, the artists included in this exhibition also opened new horizons for the comparative study of avant-garde art as it developed in the west and in the east. In this way, their works challenge us to reassess our relationship to art, society, and the public in the global, cross-cultural context we live in.

This awareness raises the fundamental question of what drives the rejection of the conventional in favor of experimentation, and whether art is merely an aesthetic tool for self-expression or a medium to create social awareness through political and social reflections? Ultimately, it provides a platform for art historians to unpack the differences and commonalities between two cultural standpoints that would seem to be opposed.

The Challenging Souls is therefore a research project which examines the trajectory of the experimental art movement, comparing the visual languages of three artists who have prevailed in the face of social changes and upheavals, dating back to the 1960s.

The Challenging Souls is now on view at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai through July 28, 2019.