Art Dubai 2017

ART DUBAI

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY

GALLERY MISSION Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. With spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York City (in Chelsea and on Madison Avenue), the gallery was the first to focus exclusively on the rise of globalization in contemporary art. The gallery represents painters, sculptors and photographers from around the world. They each work in different mediums and use diverse techniques, but share a passion for cross-cultural dialogue. The gallery is renowned for its support of cultural activities—including poetry readings, book launches, music performances, and film screenings—that further its mission of East-West exchange.

MIYA ANDO

A descendant of Bizen sword makers, New York-based artist Miya Ando spent her childhood among Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan, and later, in California. Best known for her sublime metal paintings, Ando combines the traditional techniques of her ancestry with modern industrial technology, skillfully transforming sheets of metal into ephemeral, abstract paintings suffused with color.

The focus of Ando’s artistic practice is the intrinsic connection between the human sphere and the natural world. “My interest is in creating work that allows viewers to experience a relationship to nature and to be truly in the moment as they encounter the transitory qualities of light,” Ando says. “I want to draw people into a slowed-down environment with work that is experiential and employs the visual vocabulary of natural phenomena and transformation.”

Transformation—both in the physical and the metaphysical sense—is the unifying element in all of Ando’s work. To produce the light-reflecting gradients on her metal paintings, Ando applies heat, sandpaper, grinders, acid and patinas to the metal canvases, irrevocably altering the material’s chemical properties. It’s by an almost meditative daily repetition of these techniques that Ando is able to subtract, reduce and distill her concept until it reaches its simplest form. The resulting works explore the duality of metal and its ability to convey strength and permanence, yet in the same instance, capture the fleetingness of light and the transitory nature of all things.

Miya Ando has a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and attended Yale University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery. She apprenticed with the master metalsmith Hattori Studio in Japan, followed by a residency at Northern California’s Public Art Academy. Her work has been shown worldwide, including at the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, California; in a show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum; and in an exhibition at the Queens Museum, New York. In 2015, a largescale installation, Emptiness the Sky (Shou-Sugi-Ban), was included in Frontiers Reimagined, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale.

Miya Ando has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture in London built from World Trade Center steel to mark the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, for which she was recently nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. Awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2012.

Born in Los Angeles, 1978 | Lives and works in New York

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Red Diptych Kurenai Crimson, 2016, pigment, urethane, dye and resin on aluminum, 36 x 72 inches/91.4 x 183 cm 5

Beni Crimson, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 48 x 24 inches/122 x 61 cm 6

Transformation Gold 4.2.1, 2016, pigment and urethane on aluminum, 48 x 24 inches/122 x 61 cm 7

YĹŤgen Blue Green, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 48 x 48 inches/122 x 122 cm 8

Hamon 40.40.6, 2016, pigment and urethane on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches/102 x 102 cm 9

White Grid, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 96 x 96 inches/244 x 244 cm, 64 panels each 12 x 12 inches/31.4 x 31.4 cm

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YĹŤgen Yellow Green, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 12

YĹŤgen Sea Green 2, 2016, pigment, urethane, dye and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 13

YĹŤgen Blue Purple Gold, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 14

YĹŤgen Blue Green Flicker, 2016, pigment, urethane, dye, mineral dust and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 15

Blue Taupe Mandala, 2017, pigment, urethane, dye and resin on stainless steel, 40 inches/101.6 cm tondo 16

Grey Gold Mandala, 2017, pigment, urethane, dye and resin on stainless steel, 40 inches/101.6 cm tondo 17

YĹŤgen Black Blue White Mist, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 36 x 36 inches/91.4 x 91.4 cm 18

YĹŤgen Light Vermillion, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 19

YĹŤgen Rose Gold Lavendar, 2016, pigment, urethane and resin on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 20

Phenomena Blue Line, 2017, pigment and urethane on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches/102 x 102 cm 21

ZHENG LU

The gravity-defying sculptural works of Zheng Lu are deeply influenced by his study of traditional Chinese calligraphy, an art form he practiced growing up in a literary family. Zheng Lu uses language as a pictorial element, inscribing the surface of his stainless-steel sculptures with thousands of Chinese characters derived from texts and poems of historical significance.

To create his metal sculptures, the artist begins with a plaster base. He then laser-cuts characters into metal, and in a fashion similar to linking chainmail, uses heat to connect the pictographs so that they can be shaped to the support. The resulting works are technically astonishing; their fluid, animated forms are charged with the energy (qi) of the universe, belying their steel composite.

Zheng Lu graduated from Lu Xun Fine Art Academy, Shenyang, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture in 2003. In 2007, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, while also attending an advanced study program at The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. Zheng Lu has participated in numerous exhibitions in China and abroad, including at the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow; Musée Océanographique, Monaco; Musée Maillol, Paris; the National Museum of China, Beijing; the Long Museum and the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai. In 2015, the artist had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, one of the leading institutions in the region.

His most recent large-scale solo exhibition, titled Re-sist-ance, was on veiw at the Long Museum in Shanghai in 2016.

Born in Chi Feng, Inner Mongolia, 1978 | Lives and works in Beijing

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Water Dripping - Splashing, 2014, stainless-steel, site-specific installation 23

Water in Dripping - No. 8, 2013, stainless steel, 80.3 x 72.4 x 62.6 inches/204 x 184 x 159 cm 24

Water in Dripping - Splashing 1, 2013, stainless steel, 47.2 x 35.4 x 59 inches/120 x 90 x 150 cm 25

HIROSHI SENJU Japanese-born painter Hiroshi Senju is noted worldwide for his sublime waterfall and cliff images, which are often monumental in scale. He combines a minimalist visual language rooted in Abstract Expressionism with ancient painting techniques unique to Japan.

Senju is widely recognized as one of the few contemporary masters of the thousand-yearold nihonga style of painting, using pigments made from minerals, ground stone, shell and corals suspended in animal-hide glue. Evoking a deep sense of calm, his waterfalls, which he creates with incredible delicacy by pouring paint onto mulberry paper on board, conjure not only the appearance of rushing water, but its sound, smell and feel.

Hiroshi Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an Honorable Mention Award at the Venice Biennale (1995), and has participated in numerous exhibitions including The New Way of Tea, curated by Alexandra Munroe, at the Japan Society and the Asia Society in New York in 2002; Paintings on Fusuma at the Tokyo National Museum in 2003; and Frontiers Reimagined, a Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale in 2015. He was recently awarded the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for his contributions to art.

Public installations include seventy-seven murals at Jukoin, a sub-temple of Daitokuji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, and a monumental waterfall at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The Benesse Art Site of Naoshima Island also houses two large-scale installations. A twelve-panel waterfall screen is currently on view in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Senju’s work is in the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; the Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo; Tokyo University of the Arts; and the Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido. In 2009, Skira Editore published a monograph of his work titled Hiroshi Senju. The Hiroshi Senju Museum opened in 2011 in Karuizawa, Japan.

Born in Tokyo, 1958 | Lives and works in New York 26

Waterfall, 2016, acrylic and flourescent pigments on Japanese mulberry paper, 51.3 x 63.8 inches/130 x 162 cm 27

Waterfall, 2012, natural pigments on Japanese mulberry paper, 102.4 x 78.8 inches/260 x 200 cm 28

Waterfall VIII, 2008, flourescent pigments on Japanese mulberry paper, 76.3 x 63.8 inches/194 x 162 cm 29

Waterfall, 2014, acrylic and flourescent pigments on Japanese mulberry paper, 63.8 x 179 inches/162 x 455 cm 30

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S U N D A R A M TA G O R E G A L L E R I E S new york new york hong kong singapore

547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 • tel 212 677 4520 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 • tel 212 288 2889 4/F, 57-59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong • tel 852 2581 9678 • hongkong@sundaramtagore.com 5 Lock Road 01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 • tel 65 6694 3378 • singapore@sundaramtagore.com

President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Sales director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Contributing editor: Kieran Doherty

W W W. S U N D A R A M TA G O R E . C O M Text © 2017 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © 2017 Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.