Tang Contemporary Art Hong Kong is proud to announce that “Aura”, a duo exhibition for Xia Xiaowan and Chen Hui, will be on view from August 31 to September 27, 2017. The exhibition will showcase eleven works from two artists since 2011, including oil and watercolour paintings. Xia Xiaowan will show three new works created this year for the very first time.
The title of the exhibition, “Aura”, reflects the authenticity and uniqueness of the art creation. The idea of an aura is diametrically opposed to the popularized aesthetic that is commonly found in contemporary life. People today attempt to get close to art and make it consumable with a sense of universality, but the presence of the aura in an artwork conveys a distant feeling. An aura is like the ‘breath’ of an artwork; it breaks through the surface and brings out a sense of life and uniqueness in it.
Xia Xiaowan’s artistic aura has always come from his observations of human nature. Xia was born in 1959 in Beijing, and he made a name for himself during the “85 New Wave movement” of the 1980s; his interests in romance, soul, life, and individuality have already become part of the history of modern Chinese art. Across different creative periods, Xia has been persistent in his creation of various strange creatures. These heavy, repressed, and sometimes distorted living forms have found a place in Xia’s creative world through unimaginable living power. The exhibition presents three of Xia’s new works: “Sphinx”, “Medusa”, and “Sketch of Memories”. In these pieces, he solemnly constructs his understanding of the complex layers of life and his thoughts about lasting living power.
Xia Xiaowan
b.1959 Beijing, China
Born in Beijing in 1959, Xia Xiaowan graduated from the Third Studio of Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982. He is an artist who continues to defy conventional painting, whilst maintaining his reputation as a highly respected academic artist, belonging to an older generation who fought for artistic freedom and expression in China. His artworks has been exhibited in Minsheng Art Museum in Beijing as a solo exhibition in 2015, titled
“Rotation”.
Xia currently lives in Beijing, working as a professor in the stagecraft department of the Central Academy of Drama. He is also a member of the China Oil Painting Institute, Beijing Artists Association and Beijing Arts of Oil Painting Commission.
Chen Hui
b.1974 Nanchang, China
Born in Jiangxi in 1974, Chen Hui grew up in an artistic atmosphere as her father is a famous art theorist. After graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in 1996, Chen further received a master's degree from the China Academy of Art Oil Painting in 2009.
Chen’s paintings uniquely arrest their human figures, of which she models she deliberately extracts from their true habitats and then inserts them into a fictional, dramatized space, using them to describe her feelings about life and as an allegory for the state of worldly affairs. Chen Hui currently lives in Beijing, working as a professor at the Communication University of China.
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