May 11 to July 03, 2005

MKM Museum Küppersmühle for Modern Art

The MKM presents three exciting and contrasting positions of contemporary Chinese art: Cai Guo Qiang(1957, Quanzhou), Wang Yi Dong (1955, Shandong) and Zhang Lin Hai (* 1963, Shanghai) show paintings, drawings and the results of artistic actions. For all their contrasts, the works share a strong meditative expression.

Cai Guo Qiang shows the artistic result of his project Light Cycle, Explosion Project for Central Park, which he started on September 15, 2003 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Central Park. As an internationally outstanding performance artist who works with fire, Cai chooses an unusual technique: burning and exploding gunpowder is used on heavy paper, transforming action art into abstract pictorial form.

Wang Yi Dong presents oil paintings and drawings at the MKM. Not least his mastery of capturing the play of light and shadow on canvas with breathtaking technique made him a leading master of Neo-Realism in China. While Wang Yi Dong devotes himself with great attention to detail to the depiction of people and allows them to enter into an intensive dialog with the viewer, Zhang Lin Hai devotes himself to the phenomenon of mass. His people, mostly depicted in front of imposing mountain landscapes, blur into a surging crowd, human bodies become ornamental set pieces of the pictorial whole. The theme of human individuality, the physical and psychological vulnerability of the individual, are central ideas in Zhang Lin Hai’s work.