All posts tagged: David Zwirner

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Published by Christie Lee

The Shop / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Mar 20 – May 6 / Stepping out of the elevator at David Zwirner Hong Kong, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the wrong location. What lies before you is an old-fashioned umbrella shop – the kind more commonly seen at street level in Hong Kong. The shop is stuffed to the gills with brollies, Chinese lanterns, manuals, books, a replica of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It’s a delight to peruse. All items are for sale.  Installation view. Courtesy David Zwirner Hong Kong. Is the installation a commentary on the idea of art? An attempt to elevate the umbrella from a banal, everyday object to art by situating it in a different setting? Its creator, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, has said that Duchamp’s Fountain is his favourite art piece.  Tiravanija is a master at using everyday experiences such as eating and playing to shed light on how the personal is also the political, and how art is a part of the everyday. He …

Noteworthy Shows in Hong Kong Autumn / Winter ’23 Edition

Published by Aaina Bhargava

“Hong Kong is back!” seems to be the city’s official PR motto since quarantine for incoming travellers to the city was essentially abolished in October, and restrictions were dropped. If the succession of gala fundraisers and exhibition openings and the general year-end frenzy is anything to go by, the slogan applies to the city’s art scene, which seems to be overcompensating for its dearth of activity over the past two years. There were numerous shows and events last autumn, from Asia Art Archive and Para Site auction fundraisers to blockbuster exhibitions like Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at M+ to smaller exhibitions such as John Batten’s showcase at Ping Pong to online initiatives such as the launch of David Clarke’s digital archive. Here are eight noteworthy exhibitions. Behind Your Eyelid, Pipilotti Rist at Tai Kwun ContemporaryTai Kwun Contemporary’s blockbuster exhibition surpassed expectations, providing an experience that cultural institutions should aspire to. Serving as a mini survey of Rist’s practice, the show featured a number of highlights from the artist’s career, including I’m not the Girl who …

Sherrie Levine 谢丽·利文

Published by Diana d'Arenberg Parmanand

Hong Kong Dominoes / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Sep 4 – Oct 13, 2021 / American artist Sherrie Levine’s recent exhibition Hong Kong Dominoes at David Zwirner in Hong Kong comprised six bodies of work that span three decades of the artist’s career.Levine rose to prominence as a member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists based in New York in the late 1970s and 80s. Originally trained as a printmaker, this has continued to influence her work, of which multiple images and mechanical reproduction form the foundation. The artist chooses, reproduces and re-presents the works of dead white male artists as her own – works in the past have appropriated Walker Evans, Matisse, Brâncuși and Duchamp – undermining and calling into question concepts like authorship, originality and authenticity, and our fetishisation of these values and of certain works of art. Several works in the current exhibition make reference to modernist works. In the group of 22 watercolour on paper drawings After Henri Matisse (1985), Levine recreates and presents a sequence of …

Marcel Dzama

Published by Artomity Magazine

Crossing the Line / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Jan 22 – Mar 9 / Katherine Volk / If artists are historians of our times, Marcel Dzama represents the present. Canadian-born, New York-based Dzama references the contemporary climate in the US under Donald Trump’s presidency; this was paired with influences from elsewhere, in particular Hong Kong, for his recent show at David Zwirner, which spanned both floors of the gallery. Dzama departs dramatically from his earlier approach of sparse characters on plain paper, with his style morphing into colourful, large-scale works that are bold and chaotic but meaningful. The new approach was influenced by the work and looser approach to creation of his friend Raymond Pettibon, as well as Dzama’s time living in and visiting large cities such as New York and Hong Kong, and the vibrancy and crowded energy of these places. The neon lights of Hong Kong aren’t Dzama’s only inspiration; the city’s iconic horse racing also features as a prominent theme across multiple works, including Ghost riders (or Watch out he don’t fall on …

Oscar Murillo at David Zwirner Hong Kong

Published by Artomity Magazine

19 September – 3 November 2018 Opening reception: Wednesday, 19 September, 6 – 8pm David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Oscar Murillo at the gallery’s Hong Kong location, marking the artist’s first solo presentation in Asia. Born in Colombia and based in various locations, Murillo is known for an inventive and itinerant practice that encompasses paintings, works on paper, sculptures, installations, actions, live events, collaborative projects, and videos. Taken as a whole, his body of work demonstrates a sustained emphasis on the notion of cultural exchange and the multiple ways in which ideas, languages, and even everyday items are displaced, circulated, and increasingly intermingled. Through his command of gesture, form, and spatial organization, Murillo is able to convey a complex and nuanced understanding of the specific conditions of globalization and its attendant state of flux, while nevertheless maintaining the universality of human experience within this milieu. In recent years, Murillo has traveled extensively throughout the world to research and prepare exhibitions and other projects, making works …

David Zwirner presents Brilliant City

Published by Artomity Magazine

6 July – 4 August 2018 Opening reception: Friday, 6 July, 6 – 8pm David Zwirner is pleased to present Brilliant City, a group exhibition organized by Leo Xu at the gallery’s Hong Kong location featuring work by Francis Alÿs, Chen Wei, Stan Douglas, Li Qing, Michael Lin, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Ming Wong. The exhibition borrows its title from the lyrics of the 1987 Cantopop classic song “Starry Night,” in which the Hong Kong–based electro duo Tat Ming Pair illustrate the perplexing brilliance of the city’s landscape at night, and the feeling of loss and doubt that it harbors amongst its youth. Drawing inspiration from Hong Kong, an archetypal dystopian metropolis characterized by its unparalleled density and lofty high rises, this exhibition explores how artists across generations and locations have engaged with the complexity of urban space. 5-6/F, H Queen’s 80 Queen’s Road, Central T (852) 2119 5900 Email Tu-Sa 11am – 7pm Image: Iron Sheet by Chen Wei, Archival inkjet print, framed, 150 × 187.5 cm print, 154 × 191.5 cm framed, 2015.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand Although his photographs had graced the pages of magazines like iD and Interview magazine, for a couple of decades it was at nightclub Berghain’s Panorama Bar in Berlin that the work of Wolfgang Tillmans really seared itself on my mind. The work in question, Phillip III (1993), depicted a man exposing his anus with his hand. The Panorama Bar, known for its hedonism, where music, dance and sex dissolve into one another and clubbers can party the night away with complete abandon and without judgement, was the perfect venue for his work. What struck me wasn’t that the work was confrontational or provocative – Robert Mapplethorpe paved the way for works of this nature in the late 1970s and 80s, drawing the sting from homoerotic art. Instead it was the unapologetic directness of the work, the raw honesty and frankness of it, that impressed me most. Throughout his three-decade career photographing a diversity of subjects, Tillmans’ has demonstrated a commitment to exploring and depicting truth, blurring the boundaries between art and documentary photography. Music and clubbing …

David Zwirner: Wolfgang Tillmans’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong | Book Signing with the artist on 28 March

Published by Artomity Magazine

Opening Reception: 26 March, 6-8pm Book Signing: 28 March, 2-4pm, RSVP to evelyn@davidzwirner.com David Zwirner is pleased to present Wolfgang Tillmans’s first exhibition in Hong Kong at its newly opened gallery in H Queen’s, Central. Following the artist’s solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2017), Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2017), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2017), and most recently his first show in Africa at the Musée d’Art Contemporain et Multimedias in Kinshasa (2018), this presentation will feature a broad selection of works that respond to their surroundings and simultaneously embody a self-contained environment. Including many new photographs not publicly shown before, the exhibition will juxtapose pictures of friendship and affection with views and angles of the world at large. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue designed in close collaboration with Tillmans and published by David Zwirner Books. A special book signing with the artist will be hosted on 28 March from 2-4PM at the gallery.  Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced a younger generation more than Tillmans. Since the early 1990s, his works have epitomized a new kind of subjectivity …

David Zwirner Hong Kong Inaugural Exhibition by Michaël Borremans

Published by Artomity Magazine

Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun Jan 27 to Mar 10, 2018 Opening Reception: 6-8pm, Saturday, Jan 27, 2018 David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Michaël Borremans, inaugurating the gallery’s space in Hong Kong. The exhibition will be the artist’s first solo show in Hong Kong and his sixth overall with David Zwirner. Fire from the Sun includes small and large scale works that feature toddlers engaged in playful but mysterious acts with sinister overtones and insinuations of violence. The children are presented alone or in groups against a studio-like backdrop that negates time and space, while underlining the theatrical atmosphere and artifice that exists throughout Borremans’s recent work.  Reminiscent of cherubs in Renaissance paintings, the toddlers appear as allegories of the human condition, their archetypal innocence contrasted with their suggested deviousness. Other paintings in the exhibition depict obscure machines, whose enigmatic presence appears foreboding in the context of the toddlers and suggests an element of scientific experimentation. Borremans has gained worldwide recognition for his innovative approach to painting. Combining technical mastery …