Viewing Room

West Bund Art & Design

Booth A110

Preview Dates: 11–12 November 2021
Public Dates: 12–14 November 2021

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Lévy Gorvy is pleased to announce its inaugural participation at West Bund Art & Design with a solo exhibition of new works by acclaimed Chinese artist Tu Hongtao.  Following the gallery’s career survey of Tu’s paintings in Hong Kong and Tu Hongtao: Twisting and Turning, an exhibition of new works in London in 2020, the 10 new paintings at Booth A110, created during 2020 and 2021, form another significant presentation showcasing the artist’s philosophical and aesthetic explorations since the pandemic.

Based near Chengdu, Tu explores the constantly evolving relationship between memory, space, image, and technique in his paintings. A graduate of the renowned China Academy of Art, his work developed within the avant-garde tradition pioneered by Chinese literati painters and poets along with Western innovators. Referencing his encounters with nature, the intricate works presented at West Bund offer reinterpretations of the abstract landscape of time and space, forming a highly personal visual language.

Highlights at the booth include The Three Wishes, inspired by a bamboo forest, the work conveys intense feelings through intuitive calligraphic brushstrokes, together with recurring and overlapping space created within the painting. Exemplifying the artist’s rhythmical exploration of light, Rare Views of Grass and Autumn View of Fluctuating Peaks apply oil sticks on top of oil paint layers to present a surging of time and space. Distilled through memory and sensation, lyrical abstractions such as Purple Light of Qingshen County and Into the Forest of River Alley impart Tu’s highly personal “deep impression” of landscapes. Through subjects such as mountains, rocks, trees, and rivers, Tu showcases in these new paintings the infinite possibilities of representation and expression. The volume, brightness and darkness, and spatial depth of the scenes are expressed via stacked colors, creating new visual space and introducing the sense of time and fluidity into the two-dimensional canvas.

With expressive brushworks, the paintings are exemplary of Tu’s aesthetic vision— elegantly bringing together diverse artistic approaches to compose a contemporary image of blossoming reverie.

Coinciding with the fair, Lévy Gorvy is thrilled to publish Truth and Trick, an essay dedicated to Tu’s new works by acclaimed art critic Wu Wei, together with an in-depth interview with the artist by Danqing Li, President of Lévy Gorvy Asia.