From 24 June to 8 October 2023
Among the most interesting artistic phenomena, between the 20th and 21st centuries, there is, without a shadow of a doubt, the sudden appearance of contemporary Chinese art . Until the day before yesterday, China seemed a remote, distant, mysterious place, revealing itself suddenly upset all the hierarchies consolidated up to now both from the historical, social and economic point of view and obviously, also from the artistic and cultural point of view. Suddenly everything that happens in China affects us, directly or indirectly. Like it or not, this is the reality of a future that concerns us ever more closely and that cannot be ignored.
The spasmodic and sudden development of China could not, it is almost obvious, not affect the world of art as well. The key moment of this appearance of Chinese art on the world scene is to be placed in the early eighties, following a protest carried out by young Chinese artists and of which, artists such as Xiao Lu recently celebrated at the Guggenheim museum in New York or Song Yon Ping whose works are at the Paul Getty Museum as well as at the Moma were among the protagonists.
The presence of Chinese art after these events in the eighties inevitably underwent an acceleration, largely due to the sudden interest in China which also involved the artists who promptly turned their gaze to the West. Above all, slyly elaborating a form of Pop Art defined as pop-cynical as it placed criticism of the political class of the time at the center as well as mocking the degeneration of the behavior of a nascent consumer society. This first group gave birth to a second generation, the current one, and with which this exhibition deals exhaustively. A generation that has fully enjoyed this economic boom and these openings and that has found a new form of expression in the previously traced path. The exhibition, designed for the city of Milan , testifies to this new path, involving already consolidated and sought-after masters such as Yin Kun or Xing Jun Qin, Ma Han, Xin Haizhou or the great Xu Deqi , son of a Pop vision that has heavily marked Chinese art of the 80s and 90s, but which has been able to intelligently detach itself from it, imposing a new vein, defined Pop Ludico .
Xu De Qi will present unpublished works in Milan, specially designed for this exhibition and which speak of the erasure of painting by contemporary art. Among the surprises of the exhibition there will be a large female presence who, if in the eighties, with Xiao Lu they saw her among the protagonists of change, today she finds in disruptive personalities, such as that of Zhang Hongmei affectionately defined as the Chinese Sonia Delaunay , one of the most interesting personalities on an international level and one of the protagonists of this new course of Chinese art. Already presented at the Center Pompidou , at the Barbican in London and in international art museums and circuits, it represents an example of what female art is capable of realizing.
Via Giulio Cesare Procaccini, 4, Milan, Italy
Opening hours
opens - closes | last entry | |
monday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
tuesday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
wednesday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
thursday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
friday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
saturday | 08:00 - 19:30 | |
sunday | 08:00 - 19:30 |