Alex Katz (American, born 1927) is the outstanding protagonist of figurative painting and one of our era's most acclaimed artists. In the late 1950s, the artist began to develop his mature style, characterized by elegance, simplicity, and stylized abstraction, which typifies his entire production. Alex Katz’s paintings are the result of a transformation of the three-dimensional world into simplified landscapes and portraits. He chooses to minimize details and shading and to present bold contours and blocks of colour. Indeed, Alex Katz’s art captures the appearances and transposes them into paintings. Alex Katz’s portraits feature his own social milieu – friends, fellow artists, and most notably his wife Ada, whom he has painted more than 200 times. The artist’s quest to represent the experience of spectatorship is reflected in his portraits, also in his large landscapes, which he characterizes as “environmental”. In his continued experimentation with different media, the artist creates what he calls “cut-outs”, freestanding sculptures that blur the line between painting and object. Back in 1965, Katz began experimenting with printmaking, which became a key aspect of his artistic practice. Alex Katz’s prints, which vary from lithographs, etchings, and silkscreens to linoleum cuts, have been exhibited in major museums, such as the Albertina Museum in Vienna, which, in 2010, showed a retrospective survey of over 150 graphic works, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in an exhibition in 2012. The transposition of his notable paintings into prints allows Alex Katz to make his art more accessible to his collectors, thereby maintaining the same allure and stylish power as his painted works.

Alex Katz

With flat planes of rich, lovely color, Alex Katz’s landscapes and portraits evoke the smooth aesthetics of advertising billboards and film.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Alex_Katz_Black_Dress_Yi.pdf

The black dress has been a recurrent theme in Alex Katz's work since the very beginning. The theme of the edition goes back to one of his most iconic early paintings, which is indeed titled "Black Dress“, created in 1960 and depicting 6 different perspectives of a woman; his wife and muse Ada, wearing a classic cut little black dress, very similar to the one featured in the iconic movie Breakfast at Tiffany. Today, this painting is part of the Brandhorst Collection in Munich, Germany.

Calvin Klein said: "Alex Katz’s Black Dress series is just as modern and wonderful. And, ironically it has nothing to do with fashion. His portrait have such strong color fields and clean lines. And despite their apparent simplicity, they’re extremely expressive and perfectly capture the essence of his subjects. You can’t help but notice these women, these beautiful enigmas drawn in bold and certain strokes. You wonder who they are, how they live, what they feel, just exactly what they have going on."

The composition for the edition Black Dress (Yi), refers to the painting series titled "Black Dress" from 2010. Yi is part of the "Black Dress" series of 9 life-size screen prints of the main women Katz has painted over the years. Each standing with the upper part of their bodies shifted to the side with one arm around their waists. Aside from different names, hair color and shoes, they’re all strikingly similar – chic and could easily be guests at a cocktail party.

Katz doesn’t condemn materialism, his work is a reflection of his surroundings, he consistently documented the high society of New York, his artistic circle of friends and his family.

The editions of the Black Dress portfolio (set of 9) where created and re-drawn by Katz from April 2014 until February 2015, in his studio in New York City.

Alexandra

Black Dress (Yi)

ARTXX

Silkscreen

Jeff Koons (born 1955) playfully tests the boundaries of commerce, celebrity, banality, and pleasure. He rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. Koons turns banal commercial or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, a shift of scale, and a contextual displacement. Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog” (featuring his enormous iconic chromium stainless steel dogs); his large-scale vinyl “Inflatables”; or the giant “Split-Rocker” all follow this principle. For instance, Jeff Koons in “Puppy” engaged the past and the present, referencing the eighteenth-century formal garden, while adding the most sugary of iconography. Originally licensed as a commodities broker, Koons decided to become an artist in the late 1970s and moved from Wall Street into a factory-like studio in SoHo with hundreds of assistants. Since then, he has produced different iconic series, like the “Pre-New”, a series of domestic objects in strange new configurations, and “The Equilibrium” series, consisting of basketballs floating in distilled water tanks. The “Banality” series, which includes Jeff Koons´s “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” and “Woman in Tub”, among others, is characterized by oddly eroticized, comic, and kitsch images. However, it is indeed Koons’s “Made in Heaven” series that is his most provocative and controversial work, in which he examines the place of sexuality in visual culture. Koons is widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, and controversial contemporary artists. He constantly tests the boundaries between art and commerce, high culture and mass culture, ready-made and art objects, by decontextualizing his objects and lifting them to iconic status. Jeff Koons´s art is the result of his intention to bring it out of the enclave of the genius-driven artist into the realms of contemporary pop and commerce-driven culture.

Jeff Koons

One of the most famous artists working today, Jeff Koons makes gleeful, tongue-in-cheek sculptures, paintings, and installations that border—and often cross—the edge of good taste.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Jeff_Koons_-_Collectors_Set_6___Weng_Contemporary.content_sheet.pdf

We are thrilled to offer you an exclusive, limited edition, the Collector´s Set of the Balloon Animals. Incorporating the vocabulary of Jeff Koons´s iconic Celebration series; the Balloon Rabbit, Balloon Monkey, and Balloon Swan, that marked a spectacular new chapter in the artist´s oeuvre.

The limited-edition, now in a matching edition number - only 40 editions created, touches on various important subjects of the history of art; such as the biblical creation, our anti-aging obsession, the memento mori, cheating death, as well as through its materiality; porcelain with chromatic coating. Koons democratizes porcelain, a material once used exclusively for kings, to the masses, and the reflection of the Balloon Animals adds elements of the Greek myth of Narcissus - "if you don´t move, nothing happens", as Koons has said.

The six artwork figures presented as a set have been very successful and performed very well in the auction market. Last June, in 2019, it was first offered at the Dorotheum as a matching edition number set and it sold for $85,000. In 3 months another matching Collector´s Set was offered at Phillips, in New York, and the price it fetched was over $93,000 - a price increase of 10%. This year, in January 2020, another matching set was offered, at Phillips in London, and it sold for $100,000 – an almost 20% price increase in 6 months. It is interesting to notice that despite the geographic location; Vienna, New York, and London, these Jeff Koons Balloon Animals, in matching edition number, are very desirable and they have shown price appreciation in a very short amount of time.

Balloon Animals (Collector's Set)

Balloon Animals (Collector´s Set)

Limoges porcelain with chromatic coating

The Turner prize winner and epicenter of the YBA movement. Hirst's emblematic art of our era revolutionizes the art market. Hirst is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today, creating truly iconic artworks.

A genuine star of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, Damien Hirst has always made a point of mixing up different media. Whether as a sculptor, an installation artist, a painter, or a printmaker, Hirst has produced many of the most spectacular and widely discussed works in recent years and helped to revolutionize the art market. Damien Hirst’s, For the Love of God, the diamond-encrusted replica of the skull of a thirty-five-year-old man from the thirteenth century, broke all records to become the most expensive contemporary artwork in the world. Damien Hirst´s artworks are truly emblematic icons of our era, with their recurring motives such as dots, butterflies, cows, sharks, skulls, pills, and pharmacy cabinets. His works, captivating and intense as they are, challenge our stereotyped concepts and beliefs. Damien Hirst’s shark, suspended in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), is widely recognized, as are his real butterflies suspended in paint or thousands of butterfly wings arranged in a mandala-like pattern – the famous Damien Hirst butterfly paintings. Since 1986 he has been producing the Spot paintings (sometimes called Dot Paintings), a series of paintings with evocative pharmacological titles, which display lines of colored spots. Damien Hirst´s Spot paintings and his Spin paintings became iconic series. Inspired by such diverse themes as life, death, art, science, and medicine, Damien Hirst’s art takes a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. The energy and inventiveness are also to be found in Damien Hirst's prints, which continue to stir controversy within the viewer with the same intensity.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst, a poster boy for the Young British Artists who rose to prominence in late 1980s London, is one of the most notorious artists of his generation.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Damien_Hirst_-_politeness_8YQP0oh.pdf

Politeness is one of the eight works from the iconic Virtues prints, the latest edition by British artist Damien Hirst.  These eight limited editions are each titled after one of The Eight Virtues of Bushidō according to Nitobe Inazō -Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honour, Loyalty, and Control. A continuation of Hirst's "Cherry Blossom" works, which will be exhibited for the first time at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, in July 2021 until January 2022. Hirst devoted two years, in 2018 and 2019, to creating the 107 imposing paintings that comprise the Cherry Blossoms series. In his London studio, he combined thick brushstrokes and elements of gestural painting, referencing Impressionism, Pointillism, and Action Painting. Hirst has been fascinated by the subject
of cherry blossoms from an early age, as early as at the age of three - still remembering - watching his mother paint a cherry blossom tree in blossom. As a young adult Hirst was enchanted by a cherry blossom tree outside his bedroom window in Devon. The series of the Cherry Blossoms once again binds Hirst's oeuvre together; each blossom is made out of coloured dots echoing his Spot series, as well as the Veils paintings and even going all the way back to his Visual Candy series - early painterly representations created in
an abstracted matter.

Politeness (The Virtues, H9-4)

Laminated Giclée print on aluminium composite panel

A prominent member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Tracey Emin´s production encompasses different mediums including film, painting, neon, embroidery, drawing, writing, installation and sculpture. Her work is intensely personal, revealing intimate details of her life with honesty and humour. Tracey Emin uses all aspects of her life in her art, turning her autobiography into broader statements about sex, love, death, freedom, and everyday life. This audacious and confessional approach earned her a nomination for the Turner Prize in 1999. The artist received notable acclaim, among others, for her installation My Bed, featuring her unmade bed surrounded by personal items, which explored the allegorical qualities of a bed as a place of birth, sex, and death.

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin’s poetic, confessional practice spans film, painting, neon, embroidery, drawing, installation, and sculpture.

British artist Tracey Emin (b. 1963) is known for incorporating all aspects of her personal experience into her art, turning intimate autobiography into broader statements about sex, love, death, freedom and everyday life.

True Love Always Wins is a four-colour lithograph created in 2016 to celebrate Team GB’s participation in the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Emin´s print features a snaking mountain -the winding journey to achieve true love- surmounted by the city´s iconic statue, Christ the Redeemer, whose stretched arms stand as a symbol of true love.

The work encapsulates the optimism and positive energy that drives Team GB athletes and their supporters and acts as an inspirational statement of hope and faith for all.

True Love Always Wins

Four colour lithographic print on Somerset 300gsm Velvet White paper

Joyous and alluring, this glittering spot variation shows versatility of these signature series. The shimmering and playful composition radiates delight and also celebrates Damien Hirst’s thirst for experimenting with the latest techniques of print making. Spot prints are inspired by the series of Spot paintings which are considered one of the most important series within the artist's ouevre.

The texture of this metallic Spot print is juxtaposed with the opaque, pure colours of the print. It is in these series, according to Hirst, he discovered one of the most fundemental things in art - the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format.

Carvacrol

Weng Fine Art

Silkscreen with Bronze Glitter

Born on February 9th, 1932, in Dresden, Germany, Richter was raised during the Second World War becoming an artist in Eastern Germany and escaping Communism in 1961. His life has followed a series of historical events whose memories are kept alive through his work. From the beginning, Richter explored different paths simultaneously, alternating between the abstract and the figurative, developing a profusion of themes, mediums, and techniques. Deeply affected by the Second World War, he made forays into his own memory as well as that of Germany. History continuing as the dominant theme, he worked from photographs: from an annihilated Dresden, to the Baader-Meinhof gang, to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Ever unpredictable, Richter has found inspiration in the classic Italian Grand Masters such as Titian (Annunciation after Titian) and painted an immense multi-coloured checkerboard (Colour Chart). When the artist, who has never adhered to any particular convention, fashion, or trend, embarked on his most abstract series (Abstract Paintings), his innovative; overturning buckets of colour that he proceeded to crush onto ten-meter square canvases.

Gerhard Richter

One of the most famous artists to emerge from post-war Germany, Gerhard Richter is known for his prolific, varied, and widely influential painting practice.

Editions form an important part of Gerhard Richter's œuvre. From 1965 onwards he has produced prints, photographs, oil paintings, artist's books, multiples and posters in edition as they offer the artist a chance to explore creative possibilities in especially diverse and experimental ways.

Lately, Richter was increasingly focused on his Abstract Paintings. Based on Gerhard Richter´s Flow paintings, which were created by capturing poured enamel paints on a glass surface, these editions are chromatographic prints of high-resolution photographs of the originals, mounted on aluminium. The artist refers to them as "facsimile objects", even if they proceed indeed from the Flow paintings, this series distinguishes from the originals in some aspects: in some cases they are presented differently by the artist; in others, they represent the only version of paintings that no longer exist. This exclusive series was released by Serpentine Galleries.

Bagdad I (P09)

C-Print on aluminum

Since the 1960s, Ruscha has made photographic books, tongue-in-cheek photo collages, paintings, and drawings that demonstrate a keen interest in language and the idiosyncrasies of life in Los Angeles, where the artist has lived since the 1950s. In his most famous works, he places words and phrases from the colloquial and consumerist vernacular atop photographic images or fields of color—a strategy that situates him within a larger Pop art lineage. Ruscha often paints and draws with unusual materials such as gunpowder, blood, and Pepto Bismol, drawing attention to the deterioration of language and the pervasive clichés in American culture. Ruscha’s work has been exhibited across the globe, and the artist has enjoyed solo shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Moderna Museet, in addition to the Venice Biennale, where he represented the United States in 2005. At auction, his work has sold for eight figures.

Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s expansive oeuvre defies easy categorization, though it’s all infused with a kind of deadpan California cool.

Ed Ruscha, along with seven other leading international artists, were asked to create a print to celebrate Tate Modern’s 21st anniversary.

Ed Ruscha began his career creating commercial graphics for a Los Angeles advertising agency in the 1960s. His subsequent work often references advertising, both in themes and technique. How words, sounds and images relate to each other is an ongoing fascination.

'Turbo Tears' (2020), like many of Ruscha's works, uses an eye-catching type font that is reminiscent of straightforward advertising slogans. Instead, the text 'Turbo Tears' creates a strange and contradictory image. Ruscha has said, "I’ve always had a deep respect for things that are odd, for things that cannot be explained. Explanations seem to me to sort of finish things off".

Turbo Tears

2 Colour Lithograph Hand Printed on Grey Rives BFK

Born Brian Donnelly, KAWS is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer who has established himself is one the most prominent heirs of Pop Art. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York, he briefly worked as a freelance illustrator on Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. This fascination and affinity for cartoon and illustration has carried over to his artistic career. He is known to include reworked cartoon icons such as characters from the The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants or the Smurfs as well as the advertisement personalities like the Michelin Man. Gradually expanding his imagery, the artist also invented his own host characters including his most recognizable creation, COMPANION, a cartoon Mickey-Mouse like body and gloved hands, skull-and-crossbones head with X-eyes. 
In exploiting the sentimental potency of iconic imagery, KAWS playful and psychologically charged oeuvre infused with humour, humanity and affection for our times, celebrates generosity, support for others and the deep need we have for companionship. KAWS has gained undisputed prominence in the market with his reconceptualization of popular culture’s most beloved icons within the discourse of contemporary art.

Kaws

One of the most iconic artists of his time, KAWS is known for combining his own characters with beloved popular culture icons to wittingly question the condition of contemporary society.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Kaws_Share_2021_Content_Sheet__compressed.pdf

KAWS’s "companion" rank amongst the most emblematic figures within the American artist’s pervasive visual lexicon. In recent years, KAWS has successfully traverses the realms of high art and mass culture, with his trademark "companion" character. Simultaneously celebrating and mourning a globalized age of capitalism, mass consumption and accelerated diffusion of information, "companion" remains a loyal sidekick: while his X-eyes are eternally closed in defiance of a world pervaded with brands, logos, and homogenized consumerism, the figure’s adorable cartoon presence harnesses our childhood memories to remind us of the power of hope and faith in humanity.

Share

Screenprint on Stonhenge grey paper

The artist delights in satirizing everyday human interactions, filtering the mundane through a sense of childlike wonder and an unguarded sense of humor. Shrigley attended the Glasgow School of Art and has exhibited in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen. His works belong in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, and the Arts Council Collection. Shrigley has also worked in sculpture, photography, and printmaking, and has produced music as well.

David Shrigley

David Shrigley’s drawings, paintings, animations, and neon texts embrace cartoon aesthetics and an absurd, deadpan sensibility.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/David_Shrigley_-_Im_sorry_for_being_awful-merged-compressed_e5wGFfC.pdf

David Shrigley’s drawings, paintings, animations, and neon texts embrace cartoon aesthetics and an absurd, deadpan sensibility. The artist delights in satirizing everyday human interactions, filtering the mundane through a sense of childlike wonder and an unguarded sense of humor.

I'm Sorry For Being Awful

12 colour screenprint on Somerset Tub Sized 410gsm paper. Printed by K2 Screen, London.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Alex_Katz_White_Roses.pdf

“White Roses” are part of the famous flower painting series by Alex Katz. The aesthetics of flowers such as flags, tulips and roses has been continuously explored by the artist throughout his career.

This compositon is an exploration of the volumes and colors created by natural light, "White Roses" breathe nature, the radiant white delights the vision against the limitless blue background. Katz’s flower themes are inspired by everyday motifs and are among most favorite subjects of the artist within the theme of nature.

White Roses

The Chinese artist is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in the East and West, a global citizen who calls for political investigation within his wide practice. Ai Weiwei investigates and questions institutions and regimes at the core of his work, he measures our existence in relation to economic, political, and social forces, while his practice is rooted in Chinese tradition he executes within a contemporary and conceptual creativity.

His provocative blend of Chinese tradition and craftsmanship within fully contemporary practice serves his strong criticism of human rights violations and condemnations of governmental corruption. His own life since childhood has been marked by his struggles and fights against the Chinese Government. His father, a renewed poet, was declared “class enemy” and sent to labor camp with his family. Migrating to New York was his opportunity to expand his artistic vocabularies where he stayed for over a decade. During this time, he became influenced by the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Hasper Johns.
He was secretly detained without any official charges being filed for 81 days from April 3 to June 22, 2011 by the Chinese government, and his passport was held for 4 years afterward. Since being allowed to leave China in 2015 he has produced monumental installations and artworks that advocate for refugee rights and make awareness on the global crisis of displacement.

Ai Weiwei

Dissident artist Ai Weiwei is famous for conceptual artworks that challenge authority and explore the links between the contemporary world and traditional Chinese culture.

Ai Weiwei’s middle finger has been a recurrent theme in the artist production. His photographic series, Study of Perspective (from 1995 onwards), encourages questioning towards governments, institutions and establishments. Ai’s middle finger in flipping of the bird gesture in front of symbols of power across the globe, from the Tiananmen Square to the White House, makes explicit the artist’s rejection of any form of oppression against human freedom. With a raise of his middle finger, Weiwei champions the social responsibility and the importance of standing for our own values and not those created by others.

This precious edition of 100 Study of Perspective in Glass (2019) in six different colours nods to the series Study of Perspective, pointing out to the artist’s deepest beliefs regarding freedom of speech and democratic values. The translation in Murano glass of the iconic Ai Weiwei’s middle finger in six different colours, is powerful and yet elegant. The sculptures, made out from the artist´s own hand cast, embody the deep and engaged message of Study of Perspective series in an edition of precious material and superlative craftsmanship: the innate light and airy qualities of the glass melt with the sturdiness of the design producing a rare effect of beauty and mystic power.

Study of Perspective in Glass (Deep Amber)

Murano Glass Casting

Weng Contemporary is delighted to present you with the most iconic work of the 21st century and as Jeff Koons himself has called it the "Trojan horse“ of the Celebration series. The only authentic limited edition depicting the free-standing Balloon Dog is finally here.

This edition is a reproduction of the larger sculpture of the Balloon Dog from the Celebration series, as conceived in five unique colours (starting with Blue, Magenta, Yellow, Orange, Red) starting in 1994 and completing them in 2000.

The Balloon Dog has chameleon-like qualities; its reflective surface is capable of physically changing with its surroundings and its many-layered meanings make it conceptually change in the mind of each viewer.

This limited art edition comes from an edition size of 799 pieces and was created of Limoges porcelain and manufactured in Limoges, France. The freestanding limited edition of the Balloon Dog (Blue) requires 60 people for the production of each work and it takes a full month to complete one. Its creation combines traditional porcelain decoration techniques with new technologies which are not typically applied to ceramics, this combination allows to achieve metallic and reflective characteristics.

Each edition is signed on the inside front right leg and the signature is applied on top of the porcelain and fired in the oven.

Balloon Dog (Blue)

Born in India, Anish Kapoor has lived in England since the 1970s. From 1973 he studied in London at the Hornsey College of Art, before going on to the Chelsea School of Art. After spending some time in India in 1979, he gained recognition on the international scene from the early 1980s. Since the early 1980’s the artist has not only produced some of the most innovative work in contemporary sculpture but has also done much to re-establish certain original sculpture forms. Although he is influenced by his cultural origins, Anish Kapoor continues to incorporate new ideas into his work. Born out of spiritual reflection, his pieces strive to give form to the vital and opposing forces, as in his series of Shadow Prints: full/empty, material/spiritual, light/darkness, visible/invisible, aware/unaware, male/female, land/sea. Through a visual vocabulary that incorporates colour pigments in particular as well as glass fiber and stainless steel, the artist has developed an ambitious body of work in sculpture and installation that at times approaches design and architecture. Often displayed in public spaces, Anish Kapoor’s sculptures are striking for their apparent simplicity and yet his work is hard to overlook and has a hold on its audiences.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is known for elegant sculptures of spare geometries and organic forms, which he fabricates with feats of engineering.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Anish_Kapoor_Shadow_III.pdf

Anish Kapoor’s art is always striking, his pieces delivering a captivating experience. In this series of Shadow prints, as in his monumental sculptures, Anish Kapoor puts the relationship between conflicting energies at the center of his creation. His sculptures appear solid and intangible, dark and light, empty and full. In these print series Kapoor is engaging the same dichotomies but on a two dimensional surface.

A colour of intense depth gradually focuses into a bright luminous white; absorbed by the vacuum at the center of the print, the viewer is drawn into a breath-taking visual experience. These prints possess a three-dimensional quality, which is reminiscent of Kapoor's sculpture. The viewer is constantly pulled back and forth between pure color and bright white as if pulled into some vortex.

Shadow III (Portfolio of 9)

Etching

Hirst’s Skull rebuffs the traditional image of the skull as symbol of death and decay, transforming it into a glorious, glamorous “Victory over Death”. And yet the ambivalence of the message is apparent, where a diamond-encrusted skull may be just a ridiculed prideful attempt to triumph over death.

The work obtains a playful aspect, as opposed to all the typical sinister “memento mori” vanitas images of skulls throughout art history. The work is based on the image of the sensational "For the Love of God", a sculpture created by the artist as a replica of the skull in 2007, which broke all records to become the most expensive contemporary artwork in the world. "Victory over Death” is a meditation on human mortality.

Victory over Death

Colour Etching

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese performance and installation artist based in Berlin. Confronting fundamental human concerns such as life, death, and relationships. A former student of Marina Abramovic, Shiota explores human existence throughout various dimensions by creating an existence in the absence either in her large-scale thread installations that include a variety of common through her drawings, sculptures, photography and videos. 

Shiota gained international fame, when she represented Japan in 2015 at the Venice Biennale with The Key in the Hand. The installation made of dangling 50,000 metal keys, collected from around the world, bound together in a colossal red web hovering above two wooden boat offered a collective metaphor for the distillation of individual experiences into collective memory. The manifestation of Shiota’s emotions and interior battles, truths and memories that are at once personal and collective makes her oeuvre is very intimate but also universal.

Chiharu Shiota

Best known for her delicate, mixed-media web-like composition combined with everyday items, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota’s oeuvre, explores fundamental human concerns such as life, death and relationships.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Chiharu_Shiota_Second_Skin_2014_Edition_of_30_Content_Sheet_compressed.pdf

The Berlin based, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is best known for creating immersive thread installations that surround the public like a mental space. Shiota gained international fame, when she represented Japan in 2015 at the Venice Biennale with “The Key in the Hand”. The installation made of dangling 50,000 metal keys, collected from around the world, bound together in a colossal red web hovering above two wooden boat offered a collective metaphor for the distillation of individual experiences into collective memory. Shiota’s mixed media web like compositions explore the connections between past and present, object and memory. By incorporating everyday objects, such as clothing or furniture, containers of proud memories whether joyful and painful these banal yet intensely personal items symbolise the poetics of everyday life. The former student of Marina Abramovic, explores and confronts fundamental human concerns such as life death and relationships, by manifesting her emotions and interior battles, truths and memories that are at once personal and collective. Shiota’s oeuvre is very intimate yet also universal. 
“Second Skin”, 2014 is a great example of a two dimensional representation of Shiota’s artistic practice and reminiscent of several site specific installations created in 2012: “State of Being” at Casa Asia, Barcelona, Spain and Labyrinth of Memory at La Sucrière, Lyon, France, but also “Seven Dresses” in 2015 at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken, Germany.

Second Skin

Photoengraving

Yue Min-Jun (born 1962, Daqing, China) is one of the leading Chinese artists. He is best known for oil paintings depicting formations of his laughing self-portraits in various settings. His iconography is easily recognisable, it challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and political issues in a radical, abstract, ironic and cynical manner.
Yue Min-Jun initially started painting as a hobby, subsequently he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Hebei Normal University, China in 1985. In the 90s he joined an artist community in Yuan Ming Yuan, a village near Beijing where he began to form his style and iconography. The paintings, sculptures, and installations of Yue Minjun feature uniform laughing pink faces, which appear to be self-portraits. Through various symbols, metaphors, signs, or through depictions of daily life the artist constructs various realities against which the laughing figures are rendered. Yue became famous after his participation in the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, which granted him access to international art. One of the best-known paintings by Yue Minjun and an icon for modern Chinese art and the Cynical Realism movement is Execution. It was painted in 1995 and is generally regarded as a reaction to the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, as it shows several laughing men in front of an execution squad. The cloned all smiling Minjun self-portraits have become known in the art world as the "Silly Man". As the preparation for his paintings, the artist uses photographs of himself being photographed in various poses. This approach reflects the self-irony of the artist. Yue Minjun is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement, however, the artist does not support such attribution. Nevertheless, Yue often challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and political issues in a radical, abstract, ironic and cynical manner.

Yue Minjun

In fantastical paintings populated with heightened, hysterical self-portraits, Yue Minjun satirizes contemporary society and art historical tropes.

In fantastical paintings populated with heightened, hysterical self-portraits, Yue Minjun satirizes contemporary society and art historical tropes. Yue paints himself in fluorescent hues with a gaping grin. He occasionally multiplies his likeness, making his compositions even more menacing; his style has made him a pioneer of China’s Cynical Realism movement. Yue’s influences include Chinese socialist realism, Surrealism, and European classical paintings. He studied oil painting at Hebei Normal University in Shijiazhuang and has exhibited in Hong Kong, Berlin, Shenzhen, Shanghai, London, Basel, and New York. Yue has been the subject of numerous institutional shows at venues such as the Macao Museum, the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, the National Art Museum of China, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern.

Birds of Peace

Lithograph

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Alex_Katz_Vivien_in_Black_Hat.pdf

Being part of Alex Katz ‘Black Hat’ Series, this print features Vivien Bittencourt, a film director as well as the artist’s daughter-in-law. Together with her husband, Bittencourt filmed the artist painting in Alex Katz: Five Hours, documenting the production of his painting on January 3.

Vivien is shielded by a large black hat and sunglasses, her image is playfully aloof and mysterious. This thirty-four-colour screenprint shows Katz’s clean lines and minimal approach to portraiture. The solid monochrome background, a gleaming bright yellow – resembling the sun. Naturally, the sitter is wearing a hat and sunglasses! She is presented elusive but also glamorous, rendered in Katz’s characteristic flat and timelessly recognizable painterly style; the bold colours, simple but strong composition. Minimal and somehow Pop elements surface – even though Katz was never interested in neither movements.

Vivien in Black Hat

Best known for his photorealistic drawings, Longo explores imagery within a complex social and cultural forces. Robert Longo was born in 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, and has had a childhood fascination with mass media: movies, television, magazines, and comic books, which continue to deeply influence his art. One of the quintessential artists of the 1980s, Longo is perhaps best known for the writhing, dancing figures in his iconic Men in the Cities series.

The American artist´s drawings are, perhaps, his most iconic. They are as much about the content they depict as they are about the artist´s intense devotion to the practice of drawing. His amazingly deep, anthracite charcoal drawings show emotional motives. Perhaps the best known photorealist series of Robert Longo´s is Men in the Cities, depicting contorted, life-size human figures in an urban setting. Robert Longo´s art focuses on his never-ending investigation of the themes of power and authority, which also permeate his series of blackened American flags (Black Flags, 1989–91), and oversized handguns (Bodyhammers, 1993–95). Longo´s series, Monsters, which depict massive breaking waves, and The Sickness of Reason, featuring atomic bomb blasts, followed in 2002 and 2004. It was during the 1980s that Robert Longo started to produce editions, mainly lithographs. He then gradually developed a high-end print technique, Pigment Print, which allows him to reproduce his drawings perfectly. Robert Longo´s prints capture the same level of detail and emotional impact of the original drawings.

Robert Longo

Robert Longo is known for large-scale, hyperrealistic charcoal portraits that consider power, authority, and social unrest.

Robert Longo became established for his precise photo-realistic drawings, under the influence of mass media playing a major role on his work. His portraits engrave a distinctive feature, which display a three-dimensional effect, as if they could pop off the page and enter physical space at any time.

Contemplating the vastness of space, Robert Longo’s series "The outward and visible signs" , to which Saturn belongs, continues his exploration of operatic themes. In this intense print, black and white image Saturn becomes a glowing ball of dust that seems to come out from the nowhere toward the astonished viewer.

Saturn

Pigment Print

One of the eight works from "The Virtues" by Damien Hirst.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Jeff_Koons_Balloon_Animals_Set_I.pdf

This set of Jeff Koons´ Balloon Animals includes the newest limited editions made of highly reflective porcelain. Incorporating the vocabulary of his iconic Celebration sculptures, Balloon Rabbit, Balloon Monkey and Balloon Swan marked a spectacular new chapter in Jeff Koons’s oeuvre.

Jeff Koons has been interested in cultural subject matter with widespread appeal throughout his career. It is, therefore, fitting that the rabbit, the monkey and the swan have been recurring motifs in his body of work. These subjects have captured artist’s fascination throughout history, serving as allegorical figures for universal themes such as the pursuit of pleasure, sexuality and innocence. Koons merges these typically contradictory concepts through the reduction of the subjects to their most essential forms.

Dimensions:
Rabbit: 29.2 x 13.9 x 21.0 cm (11.5 x 5.4 x 8.2 in)
Monkey: 24.9 x 20.9 x 39.2 cm (9.8 x 8.2 x 15.4 in)
Swan: 24.1 x 16.4 x 21.0 cm (9.4 x 6.4 x 8.2 in)