On Love? On War?: Prominent Contemporary Chinese Artists    Oct 22 - Nov 14, 2009

STUX Gallery, in collaboration with Carrie Clyne, is pleased to announce the opening of On Love? On War? : Prominent Contemporary Chinese Artists. Stux Gallery is presenting this exhibition as part of the art program China in Chelsea hosted by the Carnegie Hall in New York for the upcoming event “A Festival Celebrating Chinese Culture”(October 21st - November 10th) with an aim to enhance the visibility and accessibility of Chinese culture including contemporary art, theatre and music in New York.

Featuring the work of Fan Xiaoyan, Fang Lijun, Feng Zhengjie, Guo Wei, Ling Jian, Liu Jianhua, Qu Guangci, Ren Zhenyu, Su Xinping, Wei Dong, Yang Shaobin, Zhang Huan, Zhang Xiaotao, and Zhong Biao, the exhibition highlights recent yet historic painting, photography and sculpture.

On Love? On War? brings together the work of fourteen contemporary Chinese artists who use representational imagery to explore seemingly contradictory states of existence. China has gone through enormous changes over the past quarter century, and its art has moved at warp speed to remain one critical step ahead of the cultural, political and economic developments that are shaping the country at the turn of the 21st century. An upshot of art’s rapid evolution during this aesthetic and intellectual renaissance is the predominance of binary themes that represent how artists are conceptualizing a quickly shifting contemporary life.

East and West, man and woman, tradition and technology, growth and decay, love and war: these are some of the dualities inherent in the artworks in ‘On Love? On War?’ They are not opposites in opposition, rather they reflect how artists in China have become adept at combining what were previously considered interchangeable states. The artists in this exhibition create narratives that convey the individual's odyssey of both creation (love) and destruction (war). ‘On Love? On War?’ proposes this twofold identity is not only a symptom of society in rapid flux, but also represents a state of poise and unity.