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LONDON

Eastern Exposure: Meaning & Materiality in Contemporary Asian Art

Sotheby’s | Special Presentation

October 29 – November 4, 2024

Yayoi Kusama, Buds (2), 1988, acrylic on canvas, 25.4 x 20.9 inches/65.2 x 53 cm
Yayoi Kusama, Seashore of Rotterdam, 1988, acrylic on canvas, 21 x 18 inches/53.3 x 45.7 cm
Takashi Murakami, Van Gogh, 2001, acrylic on board laid on wood panel, 39.5 x 39.4 inches/100.3 x 100 cm
Yoshitomo Nara, Dancing Alone, 2003, acrylic and coloured pencil on paper, 20.25 x 14.25 inches/51.4 x 36.2 cm
Anish Kapoor, untitled, 2011, fiberglass and paint, 61.4 x 55.1 x 21.6 inches/156 x 140 x 55 cm
Hiroshi Senju, Waterfall, 2024, gold and pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 63.8 inches/194 x 162 cm
Hiroshi Senju, Waterfall, 2024, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 38.2 x 63.8 inches/97 x 162 cm
Hiroshi Senju, Waterfall, 2024, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 44.1 inches/162 x 112 cm
Chun Kwang Young, Aggregation 09 - D077 Red, 2009, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 64.25 x 51.6 inches/163 x 131 cm
Chun Kwang Young, Aggregation 18 - JA006 (Star 1), 2018, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 63 inches/160 cm tondo
Jane Lee, No Thing Is #7, 2023, mixed acrylic media, 47.2 x 38.6 x 3.5 inches/120 x 98 x 9 cm
Miya Ando, Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) Diptych September 28 2021 5:40 AM Tokyo, 2021, ink on aluminum composite, 60.5 x 121 inches/154 x 307 cm
Golnaz Fathi, All Fades Away in Blue, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 70.87 x 61.42 inches/180 x 156 cm
Kenny Nguyen, The Eruption Series No.3, 2024, hand-cut silk fabric, acrylic paint, canvas, mounted on wall, 60 x 38 inches/152.4 x 96.5 cm
Sohan Qadri, Anila, 2007, ink and dye on paper, 55 x 39 inches/139.7 x 99.1 cm
Sohan Qadri, Udayana III, 2005, ink and dye on paper, 55 x 39 inches/139.7 x 99.1 cm
Zheng Lu, Yan Fei, 2019, stainless steel, 43.3 x 29.1 x 25.6 inches/110 x 74 x 65 cm

About This Exhibition

We are pleased to present two exhibitions in conjunction with Asian Art in London 2024

 

Eastern Exposure: Meaning & Materiality in Contemporary Asian Art, featuring work by artists from and inspired by Asia, is on view  at Sotheby’s on New Bond Street October 29 through November 4, 2024. This special presentation is open Tuesday – Friday 9 am – 4:30 pm, Saturday and Sunday 12 – 5 pm; and Monday 9 am – 8 pm.

 

Our Sotheby’s presentation spotlights gallery artists Miya Ando, Chun Kwang Young, Golnaz Fathi, Jane Lee, Kenny Nguyen, Sohan Qadri, Hiroshi Senju and Zheng Lu, alongside work by Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami and Anish Kapoor. Work by select gallery artists from and inspired by Asia will also be on view at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 4 Cromwell Place in London. Collectively, this two-part exhibition offers a glimpse into our diverse programming and focus on Pan-Asia.

 

Since opening our first gallery in New York in 2000, our mission has been to shine a light on work by artists who are deeply engaged in cross-cultural explorations—a natural outgrowth of founder Sundaram Tagore’s experience living and working in the West but having come from the East. This intermingling of cultures has been the premise of our programming for more than two decades.

 

FEATURED ARTISTS

 

New York artist Miya Ando (b. 1973, Los Angeles) is known for her luminous paintings exploring the transience of the natural world, in particular, her cloud paintings, which have been showcased in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; The Noguchi Museum in New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where her 2016 painting Kumo (Cloud) 6 was acquired for the museum’s permanent collection. 

 

Chun Kwang Young (b. 1944, South Korea) whose acclaimed Aggregations, a long-running series of tactile, abstract assemblages made from thousands of triangular forms wrapped in hanji, traditional Korean mulberry paper, were the subject of a critically acclaimed show at the Venice Biennale in 2022, which showcased forty large-scale reliefs, sculptures and installations. 

 

Golnaz Fathi (b. 1972, Tehran) is part of a thriving generation of Iranian artists who grew up during the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Fathi, whose work is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and The British Museum, is one of the few women in Iran to excel at traditional calligraphy. After establishing herself as one of the country’s most skilled practitioners, Fathi left the privileged world of traditional calligraphy to pursue a career as a contemporary artist. 

 

Jane Lee (b. 1963, Singapore) creates lush, abstract paintings by laboriously building up multiple layers of paint that coalesce into intricate, dense, sculptural expanses that often drip over edges or explode beyond the picture plane. In 2023, Lee was commissioned to create a series of interactive installations exploring space, light and reflection for an immersive solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum.

 

Kenny Nguyen (b. 1990, Vietnam) creates mixed-media paintings that center on ideas of cultural identity, displacement and integration. Drawing from his experience working with textiles, in particular, silk, a culturally significant material in Vietnam, Nguyen developed a distinctive technique to produce sensuous, three-dimensional works that he describes as “deconstructed paintings.” Nguyen’s work is currently on view in solo shows at Sundaram Tagore Singapore through November 9, and The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, through March 2, 2025.

 

Hiroshi Senju (b. 1958, Tokyo) has been exploring the sublime power of nature for more than thirty years. He began painting waterfalls in the 1990s and today they are in public spaces and museums around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; and most recently, London’s V&A Museum.

 

Chinese artist Zheng Lu (b. 1978, Inner Mongolia), creates gravity-defying, technically ambitious forms, which often focus on water, that are exhibited in museums and public spaces around the world. Zheng’s most recent public project, a two-ton, twenty-foot-tall sculpture from his iconic Water in Dripping series, was installed in a public plaza adjacent to the United Nations complex in New York.

 

Indian-born artist Sohan Qadri (1932–2011), one of the only internationally acclaimed artists deeply engaged with spirituality, is best known for his vibrantly colored works on carved and punctured paper. Qadri’s work is in the collections of The British Museum, London; the Brooklyn Museum and The Rubin Museum of Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, among others.

 

ABOUT ASIAN ART IN LONDON

 

Asian Art in London, October 30 – November 8, 2024, is an annual program that promotes London as a center of excellence in the arts of Asia. The intensive program includes specialized exhibitions, auctions and lectures in and around Central London organized by respected dealers, major auction houses and cultural institutions specializing in Asian art. The works of art offered for sale range across the Indian and Islamic world; China, Japan and Korea; and encompass Southeast Asia, from antiquity to the current century. The 2024 program is the 27th edition of Asian Art in London. 
 

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