Galerie Maria Bernheim is pleased to introduce a duo presentation with Chinese and London based artist Ding Shilun (b. 1998, Guangzhou, China) alongside American and New York based artist Eli Ping (b.1977, Chicago, USA). Both artists explore their heritage through a research into the realm of the sensuous, one through the painting the other through sculpture. Creating timeless works that respond to each other through their textures and subject matter, two generations collide in their approach of art history and around a conversation of mythology creating identities.
Ding Shilun harnesses his heritage, current events and a global history of art to create large and detailed pictorial works depicting the absurdity of society and daily life. His unique concurrence of the mythological, the historical and the quotidian allow the visualized invention of an imaginary world with a representation of himself within our seemingly homogenous society. In doing so he reflects our contemporary moment where traditional values fight a progressive spirit, with both impacting our view of reference in equal measure. Rooted in pictorial references such as Gustav Klimt or Kai Althoff intertwined with interpretations of Chinese literature. Shilun’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. The precision of the details is used to contrast the different textures found in the paintings, sometimes resembling watercolor, as well as playing on a combination of co-existing perspectives, which question the battle between real and surreal.
To complement this approach, Eli Ping presents a group of new works from his series of Monocarps and offers to the viewer for the first time in his career a larger version casted in bronze. Building on this idea of a mythology of the supernatural, Ping’s ambition is to create forms that concurrently seem to have been found in nature and totally unknown and new. Made from rolls of canvas, the essence of the gesture lies in stretching, pooling, and stitching. As mentioned by Bašić : «the twisted and stretched canvases have been soaked in resin and stiffened while being hung from the ceiling. The surfaces of the pieces have been meticulously sanded to remove any traces of their making. This gesture of suspension evokes a vertical motion, making the forms feel torn between gravity and an ascending force. » The sculptures are made with such precision in their execution that they appear to not have been made by a human hand, the texture resembles simultaneously bone and flesh, marble and skin. Mystical in their forms, these works have an otherworldly presence.
Both artists’ works dialogue over a conversation on the folds of the body, sensuality and temporality, with strong references to art historical masters from Brancusi and Fontana to Klimt, they are able to transcend their cultural heritage and transform it into a new form of art both pictorially and sculpturally. Aiming to present a different context for both Shilun and Ping, this pairing extrapolates the concept of the unseen yet.
