Erwin Wurm (Born 1954 Bruck an der Mur, Austria) is a pioneering contemporary artist who explores several different mediums and goes beyond their classical concepts. Wurm seems at first to embody a comedic attitude, highly apparent in his Fat Car series, where he intentionally disfigures car models seen as status symbols in modern society. The artist’s production, however, is rather a deeper, humorous critique of our modern, consumer, society; and Wurms gives the viewer who wants to go beyond a first superficial look, the possibility to discover such critique.
 
Wurm started his artistic career studying at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Inspired by the tradition of German artist Joseph Beuys, Wurm has offered his own perspective on sculpture mediums with his ‘One Minute Sculptures’. Wurm invited the audience to participate and interact with his sculptures to assess the medium. 

Wurm’s work has been shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Vienna, as well as the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon and the centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Wurm currently resides between Vienna and Limburg, Austria. Today the artist's collections can be seen in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London among many others.

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm expands contemporary notions of sculpture with humorous works that often invite viewer participation or anthropomorphize everyday objects.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Wurm_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_zvjuQo5.pdf

Erwin Wurm is widely recognized as a prominent sculptor in contemporary art. Throughout his entire career Wurm has sought to manipulate and deconstruct sculptures, keeping in mind the expansion and exploration of dimensions, weight and volume. Taking a new approach with sculptures, the artist explores his first encounter with flat canvas and painting, thus creating what he names Flat Sculptures. The four Flat Sculptures: Shine, Light, Melt and Wobbly belong to a series of limited edition works, inspired by Wurm drawing from his Skins exhibition, also presenting some Flat Sculptures works. The artist claims to start the process for these sculptures by looking for a fitting word, deconstructing it and redefining it in an abstract process, making it difficult to read, “there is a distance between what is obviously the word and what you see, and you have to fight for it” said Wurm. Available individually or as a set of four. Produced using high-rendered print technology.

Shine

ARTXX

Relief print on canvas

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

Erwin Wurm is widely recognized as a prominent sculptor in contemporary art. Throughout his entire career Wurm has sought to manipulate and deconstruct sculptures, keeping in mind the expansion and exploration of dimensions, weight and volume. Taking a new approach with sculptures, the artist explores his first encounter with flat canvas and painting, thus creating what he names Flat Sculptures. The four Flat Sculptures: Shine, Light, Melt and Wobbly belong to a series of limited edition works, edited in collaboration with LITO and inspired by Wurm drawing from his Skins exhibition, also presenting some Flat Sculptures works. The artist claims to start the process for these sculptures by looking for a fitting word, deconstructing it and redefining it in an abstract process, making it difficult to read, “there is a distance between what is obviously the word and what you see, and you have to fight for it” said Wurm. Available individually or as a set of four. Produced using high-rendered print technology.

Light

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Wurm_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_34Z49aS.pdf

Wobbly

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Wurm_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_VsP795n.pdf

Melt

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/Theodora_-_The_Empresses_-_Damien_Hirst_-_Weng_Contemporary_-_ArtXX_-_Content_Sheet_Compressed.pdf

“Theodora” belongs to “The Empresses”, a series of five glorious prints carefully composed of butterfly wings that create a kaleidoscope effect and are placed on a flaming red background. Each work has been carefully screen printed with glitter coat which offers that gleaming effect on them. Each Empress from this series is named after five exceptionally influential female rulers: Wu Zetian (624-705), Nūr Jahān (1577-1645), Theodora (c. 490-548), Suiko (554-628) and Taytu Betul (1851-1918). Their characters and stories are enhanced by the dominant red tone of the series, which deals with themes such as life, war, power, anger, love, joy and luck.
Extraordinarily complex and dynamic, Theodora is named for the great Byzantine empress who used  her intelligence and savvy to create lasting change in the empire. Born into the lowest class of  Byzantine society, Theodora (497-548 CE) rose to power in 527 CE following her marriage to  Emperor Justinian. She left a significant impact on the region, namely through implementing new  religious and social policies. Indeed, Theodora’s power over the empire left many to wonder if it was her and not Justinian that ruled.

The Empresses presented by Arianna Perini

Theodora (The Empresses, H10-3)

Laminated giclée print on aluminium composite, screen printed with diamond dust

The artist rejected both nonrepresentational abstraction and narratively driven Social Realism in favor of an enigmatic, symbolic style that addresses the chaos of 20th-century Germany. Baselitz’s canvases depict mythic, often grotesque figures situated in sparse fields or scenes of destruction. They’re usually oriented upside down, a tactic that toys with viewers’ perceptions and conjures a topsy-turvy aesthetic universe. Baselitz studied at the Academy of Arts in East Berlin, got kicked out, then attended the Academy of Arts in West Berlin. He has exhibited in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Zürich, and Tokyo. His work regularly sells for millions on the secondary market and belongs in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Beyeler, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate. Baselitz has also made drawings, prints, and monumental sculptures.

Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz’s raw, expressive paintings helped expand notions of figurative art in the mid–20th century.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Georg_Baselitz_Hannahs_Beine_2022_Content_Sheet_.pdf

"Hannahs Beine" finds its inspiration in Baselitz’s latest series, created during and inspired by the pandemic. Discussing the series, art historian Eric Darragon cites numerous
indicators of the history of stockings in art, as seen in Degas’s depiction of dances and Egon Schiele’s.
confrontational nudes.

Hannahs Beine

11-color archival pigment print on 300g cotton paper

Tom Sachs maintains his conceptual practice mostly through sculptures and installations. He investigates into modern hight-tech consumer culture and luxury culture. His technical approach includes variety of disparate at first sight materials such as, steel, ceramics, resin and so on.

Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs (USA, born 1966) is an American contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City.

Too Darn Hot represents a landmark moment for Tom Sachs’ investigations of the past, present and future of authentication. 

The 13-colour silkscreen print depicts LACMA's Frankenrocket, with a Cup Noodles-branded tail, a Chanel body, and Trojan nose-cone. The terms Frankenrocket was coined during Sachs’ NFT project called Rocket Factory, where people could purchase NFTs of rocket components and use them to build a rocket. If those components matched, they created a new Perfect Rocket NFT. If not, they created a "Frankenrocket“.

Too Darn Hot is produced with semi-gloss varnish, printed on 600gsm Somerset Tub Sized Satin paper and authenticated by a QR code printed in UV-light sensitive ink, which connects each print with the original Too Darn Hot NFT metadata on the blockchain. Additionally, the prints contains a bespoke deboss, which includes information from the launch of Sachs’ physical Too Darn Hot rocket at LACMA in 2021, a holographic sticker, a unique QR code linking to a certificate of authenticity stored on the blockchain, and an individually-stamped edition number.

Too Darn Hot

13-colour silkscreen print with semi-gloss varnish, printed on 600gsm Somerset Tub Sized Satin paper

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.

Lotus Pool belongs to the set of twenty lithographs from the “Snatched Ecstasy of Yue Minjun”, which comes as a limited edition of 132 rare books. The work of Yue Minjun is instantly recognizable with its uniform laughing faces, the artist's faces, thus Yue Minjun creates formations of self-portraits. Minjun creates various realities against which the laughing figures are rendered, thus creating ambiguous images, often with the sinister atmosphere, which comes as his personal cynical reaction to various social and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese realities.

Lotus Pool presents a laughing self-portrait on a white crane in the midst of the pink lotus pool. The immediate attention is drawn to the symbolism of happiness - the pink lotus has a sacred status in Chinese culture and beyond and is associated with creation, enlightenment, purity and the highest realms of Buddhism. The white crane symbolizes longevity. Such an ideal setting is juxtaposed with the contorted, "closed" posture of the sitter, whose laughter signifies tension.

Lotus Pool

Lithography

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.

Longo is best known for his hauntingly realistic works, which straddle a line between hyper-realistic and disturbingly surreal. Longo’s subject has always been power, his images characterized by frozen or extended time.

The artist´s act of appropriating iconic images of esthetic power in his chiaroscuro, seemingly created out of shadow and light, captures here a wire armature of a baroque sort of chandelier dripping with prisms. What happens in his work refuses to resolve, as the viewer is attracted to this image representing an icon of the past, yet modernized by electricity.

Crystal Chandelier

Pigment Print

Known as the power artists duo, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, created ephemeral environmental installations in urban and rural global locations.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude (respectively, born June 13, 1935, Bulgaria—died May 31, 2020, New York, U.S.; born June 13, 1935, Morocco—died November 18, 2009, New York, U.S.) stand out for their environmental and sometimes controversial temporary outdoor installations, most notably the wrapping of world-famous architectonic icons like the “Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin”, 1995 or the project "The Gates, New York", which consists of over 7'503 steel gates with orange coloured fabric stretched acres 37 km of walkaway in Central Park.
After Jeanne-Claude´s passing in 2009, Christo continued to carry out the couple’s proposed projects: “Big Air Package”, 2013 inflating an immense fabric dome within the cavernous Gasometer Oberhausen in Germany. As well as “The Floating Piers”, 2016 connecting two islands in Lake Iseo in Italy. These monumental works were seen not only by those that would visit the installations but also by passers-by. These works confront observers not only with its aesthetic properties but explore environmental, democratic, and humanist questions and it creating new ways of seeing familiar landscapes.

Christo

Christo became famous for his monumental collaborations with his wife and creative partner, Jeanne-Claude.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Christo_-_Ponte_SantAngelo__Weng_Contemporary.content_sheet.pdf

Among the various man-made and nature's creations, wrapping bridges has always been an important subject that Christo, but also together with wife and artist-collaborator Jeanne-Claude, marked the foundation of their most celebrated series (as Christo and Jeanne-Claude). Wrapping the Ponte Sant'Angelo has been a dream of the artist(s), as it is the oldest bridge in Rome and it also connects the Vatican with the city of Rome. Since their proposition submission to proceed with the installation in 1967, this project remains unrealized.

And for every project, because it takes years, you can see the early drawings and collages as just a simple, vague idea, and through the years and through the negotiations of getting the permit, you see that every detail is now clarified.

Exploring the opportunities of wrapping a built-environment, the artist(s) offers the possibility to review it by applying a new appreciation of its form and volumetric qualities. Creating a layer of abstraction to a figurative and real environment. By applying fantasy to a real occasion, at a gigantic scale, the artist(s) puts the viewer at once in a life-time experience to unravel the metamorphoses of an object.

Ponte Sant’Angelo, Wrapped

Collage on lithograph

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

JR is a photographer and artist whose identity is unconfirmed. After he found a camera in the Paris subway, he did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of Paris. He has described himself as a "photograffeur", as he flyposts large black-and-white photographic images in public locations in a manner that is similar to the appropriation of the built environment by the graffiti artist. The artist exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. JR's work combines art and performance and its subject varies from commitment, freedom, identity and limitations. JR has exhibited his work at Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Watari-Um in Tokyo, Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden, and Power Station of Art in Shanghai.

JR’s practice lies at the intersection of photography, street art, film, and social practice.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/JR_Trompe_loeil_Les_Falaises_du_Trocadero_18_mai_2021_19h58_Paris_France_2021.pdf

We are delighted to introduce you to JR's latest art editions; which are based on his installation Les Falaises de Trocadéro at the Parvis des Droits de l'Homme, from 17 May to 19 June 2021 in Paris. With Les Falaises de Trocadéro JR continues his reflection on architecture and excavation of iconic monuments, imagining a trompe l'oeil revealing a street below a large precipice topped by the iconic Eiffel Tower. Through this work, JR redefines the codes of the urban landscape and invites spectators to apprehend their environment differently. The artwork renews itself according to the various lights of day, with each moment offering a new perspective on Paris’ most famous monument, the Eiffel Tower. The latter remains the central element of the composition, but the illusion of an underground city is a new myth, adding to the long list of its rich history. JR continues to reveal the monuments of Paris in a new light by sublimating them and inviting spectators to take a fresh look at their everyday environment. JR used an anamorphosis technique, requiring the audience and volunteers to be at a precise point resulting in spectators trying to find the perfect location and interacting with the artwork, hoping not to fall into the imagined precipice.

Trompe l'oeil, Les Falaises du Trocadéro, 18 mai 2021, 19h58, Paris, France, 2021

Giclée Print Laminated with G-gloss, Mounted on 3mm Dibond

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

Candida Höfer (1944, Eberswalde, Germany) has been photographing both public and semi-public spaces in a style defined by an anachronistic approach since 1989. After studying at the Kölner Werkschule between 1964 and 1968, Candida Höfer attended the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (Germany), initially reading film with Ole John (1973-1976) and then photography with Bernd Becher (1976 -1982). Following in the tradition of the Düsseldorf School of photography, Candida Höfer has often captured images of waiting rooms, spa resorts, banks, churches, libraries, theaters, and museums. These transitional spaces are also places where universal culture is accumulated, organized, and conserved to an encyclopedic degree, and are photographed by the artist with a rigor and simplicity approaching minimalism. Immediately recognizable, Candida Höfer’s photographs crystallize the peculiar inherent in places where often an illustrious history clashes with their present-day use. As in Spiegelkantine at Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, the lighting for these neutral shots comes solely from the natural light of the location. Spaces normally packed with visitors are shown devoid of human presence: all that remains are the outlines of these architectural products of culture or industry.

Candida Höfer

In majestic large-format color photography, Candida Höfer captures the psychological residue left behind in empty public and institutional spaces.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Candida_Hofer_Teatro_Degollado_Guadalajara_III_2015_Content_Sheet.pdf

Candida Höfer is known for her images of empty interiors of libraries, museums, palaces and theatres, focusing on the cultural spaces free from human presence. Part of the artist’s latest exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery, Candida Höfer in Mexico, Teatro Degollado Guadalajara III expands her signature attention to Mexican Baroque interiors.

The self-imposed subject restrictions evident in her project are both cultural and formal in nature. The Baroque interiors of the Mexican Teatro Degollado Guadalajara provide a “formal portrait of the society itself”.

Teatro Degollado Guadalajara III

C-print

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

One of the most renowned contemporary artists, Peter Doig, who was born in 1959, in Scotland, was the central figure in the revival of painting in the contemporary art scene during the '90s. At present his oneiric landscapes are highly sought after by world-leading collectors and museums.

After a childhood spent in Trinidad and Canada, Doig only returned to Great Britain at the age of twenty in order to study art. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994, which cemented his public recognition. Themes of magical realism are recurrent through Peter Doig’s paintings, capturing timeless moments of perfect tranquillity. Doig´s dreamlike depictions are often scattered with ghostly human traces in a sensuous palette.

Many of Doig's artworks are depicting landscapes, layered formally and conceptually, somewhat abstract, with a number harking back to the snowy scenes of his childhood lived in Canada. While his works are frequently based on found images (photographs, newspaper clippings, movie scenes, record album covers), they are not painted in a photorealistic. Doig instead uses the photographs simply for reference.
The canoes have become an inspiring image throughout his work; their reflection in the water is a fantasy mirror to the unknown. This inventive style, sensuous palette, and suggestive imagery are also maintained in Peter Doig’s prints through the mastery use of different printmaking techniques. Peter Doig is one of a number of pioneering contemporary figurative artists, and recent major solo exhibitions have been staged at institutional venues, including Fondation Beyeler, Basel; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal; Gallery Met at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; and Tate Britain, London. His auction record on the painting Rosedale, created in 1991 sold for over $28 million at Phillips New York in May 2017.

Art critic Jonathan Jones said about Doig: "Amid all the nonsense, impostors, rhetorical bullshit and sheer trash that pass for art in the 21st century, Doig is a jewel of genuine imagination, sincere work and humble creativity."

Peter Doig

Peter Doig’s serene, fantastical paintings feature kaleidoscope landscapes punctuated by enigmatic, partially obscured figures.

An avid winter sportsman, Peter Doig lived in Zermatt for six weeks in 2020 and for four months in 2021, working out of a studio on the mountain. With his inventive, painterly approach, the artist uses alpine imagery and traditional printmaking techniques to investigate landscape, material, and form. These diverse series of etchings reflects a self-referential process of experiment and innovation in which works continuously evolve into their final form. Together, this body of work pays homage to Doig’s passion for skiing and connection to Zermatt, while also referencing a rich tradition of alpine paintings in Western art that began in the 15th century and was carried forward by masters such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Emil Nolde, and Ferdinand Holder.

Gornegrat Sahara Dust

Etching in two colors, aquatint, spitbite

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.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Ai_Weiwei_-_Papercuts___Weng_Contemporary.content_sheet_compressed.pdf

In his "Papercut" Portfolio of 8 Prints, Ai Weiwei reflects on his life and work through the Chinese art of papercutting. Each of the eight pieces is meticulously cut in large-format, brightly red-colored fine-art paper, representing a turning moment within the artist’s iconic oeuvre: from his permanence in New York in the ’80s, his exploration of the traditional Chinese crafts in Beijing in the ’90s, to the political activism of his most recent production


Each papercut is signed by the artist and collected in a portfolio accompanied by explanatory notes by Chin-Chin Yap, who has extensively worked with Ai Weiwei, most recently as a writer and co-producer on several films. Through these eight pieces, the artist offers a beautiful, personal retrospective in a unique format.

The Papercut Portfolio

Papercuts in clothbound clamshell box (Portfolio of 8)

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Chiharu_Shiota_I_Hope_2021_Content_Sheet.pdf

The Berlin-based, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is best known for creating immersive thread installations that surround the public like a mental space. The former student of Marina Abramovic, explores and confronts fundamental human concerns such as life death and relationship, 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.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the world has experienced innumerable complications and the word “hope” is something that we all became familiar with.

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota sought to create a space that would remind and inspire us to believe again. For her exhibition at Berlin’s König Galerie, she created an immersive installation titled I hope... The piece subsumes 10,000 letters that were sent to her from people around the globe, sharing their hopes for the future. The correspondence was then interconnected by hundreds of various lengths of scarlet thread hanging suspended in the air.

I Hope... 2021 is inspired by the lamp designed by a German industrial designer Ingo Mauer.

I HOPE...

Stainless steel, heat-resistant satin glass, transparent Din A5 sheets

Manolo Valdés (1942, Valencia, Spain) has developed a distinctive style that explores history without taking away from the original subject. After attending the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos De Valencia, Valdés began his career as one of the founding members of Equipo Cronica in the 1960’s. Equipo Cronica was frequently associated with the artists who contested Franco’s regime, questioning its official culture as repressive. Quoting figures from well-known works of art by old masters Velázquez, Rembrandt, Fra Angelico and 20th century masters such as Matisse, Picasso, and Lichtenstein. Valdés reimagines these familiar works by taking them out of their original context. In both his paintings and sculptures Valdés inflates the figures size, minimizing detail and abstracting form, while incorporating unusual materials and roughly applied paint.

Manolo Valdés

Manolo Valdés (1942, Valencia, Spain) has developed a distinctive style that explores history without taking away from the original subject.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Manolo_Valdes_-_Las_Meninas_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_DBel98u.pdf

Las Meninas are porcelain sculptures made in four different versions that are distinguished by their decoration and style; Reina Mariana I, II, III and IV. During his early visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Manolo Valdés discovered two famous paintings by Diego Velázquez, which would come to be his primary inspiration for the Las Meninas; The Portrait of Mariana de Austria (1652-53) and Las Meninas (1656). From the beginning of his works in art school until now, Valdés has never ceased to reimagine this figure with its recognizable feminine charm in different styles and mediums. Valdés’ decors for Las Meninas porcelain sculptures draws inspiration from a broad range of artists – Joan Miró, Willem De Kooning, Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein and his own work.

Reina Mariana Set of 4 (Las Meninas)

Limoges Porcelain

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

“The Empresses” is a series of five glorious prints carefully composed of butterfly wings that create a kaleidoscope effect and are placed on a flaming red background. Each work has been carefully screen printed with glitter coat which offers that gleaming effect on them. Each Empress from this series is named after five exceptionally influential female rulers: Wu Zetian (624-705), Nūr Jahān (1577-1645), Theodora (c. 490-548), Suiko (554-628) and Taytu Betul (1851-1918). Their characters and stories are enhanced by the dominant red tone of the series, which deals with themes such as life, war, power, anger, love, joy and luck.

The Empresses, set of 5

Deckchair Yellow playfully utilizes one of Damien Hirst's familiar motifs: a monochromatic background interrupted by a scattering of butterflies, a theme that the artist first introduced into his work after seeing flies get stuck on primed canvases in his studio. The artist sees the butterflies ‘stuck’ to his monochrome canvases as metaphors for the unforeseen interruptions in life—happy accidents, in this case.


For the artist, the appeal of butterflies is created largely by the appearance of life they retain in death. They symbolize regeneration, fortune and freedom in a world characterized by a materialistic consumerism that despite all glorification of money and what it can buy always longs for a deeper meaning behind the surfaces – and which yet can never truly get behind those surfaces; longing for spirituality and transcendence and yet always doomed to accept that there might be nothing behind the polished images.

Deckchair (Yellow)

Merpauh timber frame and sail cloth fabric

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Get your home ready for summer days!

At Weng Contemporary, we are thrilled to have hosted an incredible evening featuring artworks from some of the most renowned artists of our time.

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