PAST EXHIBITION

Zhao Dewei: City Pixels

April 19, 2008—May 16, 2008

Zhao Dewei was born in 1960 in Shanghai. However, his artistic life really began in Qingdao in the 1980’s.

At the time, a very active art scene was beginning to emerge from every corner of the country. The movement that is now referred to as the ’85 New Wave. Conferences and exhibitions were organized all over the country, bringing together artists from different cities, critics, curators and all the people who felt involved in the development of a modern art medium in China.

In Qingdao, Zhao Dewei was considered as a leader of the movement, actively defending the cause of free creation. At the head of the local Young Artists Association, he organized outdoor exhibitions every Sunday for over a period of three years, giving Qingdaos’s artists a chance to showcase their works to the local audience. The 1980’s were, for the artist, a period of abstract research. Combining the influence of Chinese philosophies and the will to radically challenge academic canons, Zhao Dewei was looking inside himself to find the right lines as a means of expression. One of his leitmotivs in the 1980’s was the form of Chinese characters from which his abstract curves were directly drawn.

Today, Zhao Dewei has turned towards the outside world for inspiration. The changes within the city and the urban way of life impregnate his creation. If his technique has evolved since his early paintings, the concept of his work remains the same: What Zhao Dewei lets us see on the canvas is not a representation of reality but a feeling.

To express this individual feeling Zhao Dewei has developed his own singular way of painting by projecting colours onto the frame. This is why Zhao Dewei’s works are done on such a grand scale. Only by stepping back from the frame can the artist’s vision fully be appreciated.

For this exhibition, TS1 has made a selection of urban landscape paintings. Not only his technique of painting, but also the points of view the artist has chosen on the town are similar to city sequins spread all over the frame like pixels on the screen.

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