Cui Xinming: Festival

Edouard Malingue Gallery announces the opening of its space in Shanghai, designed by BEAU Architects. Located in the West Bund, a new art hub where two private museums, art galleries, collector spaces and the West Bund Art & Design fair are situated, the 270 sqm space will offer a wider exhibition platform for the gallery’s roster of artists and an enriching experience for viewers. Edouard Malingue Gallery, Shanghai will build on the gallery’s existing programme that emphasises dynamic solo exhibitions and curatorial projects with emerging and established Asian and international contemporary artists.

Inaugurating the space will be the solo show ‘Festival’ with emerging Chongqing-based artist Cui Xinming (b. 1986). A recent graduate from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Cui is a rising Chinese artist who creates expansive oil on canvas works that express, in an elaborate and vivid painterly style, the tumultuous thoughts and reflections of a younger Chinese generation that is living through a period of constant change. From Cui’s early series ‘Black Hole of Memories’ to his most recent bodies of work ‘A Sleepwalker’s World’ and ‘Journey to the East’, Cui continually addresses, in an evolving painterly style, how his peers and compatriots are casting into oblivion the past along with its rich memories in an attempt to relentlessly attain a new stage of modernity.

Featuring an entirely new series of works, ‘Festival’ presents the artist’s apprehension of the self and his perception of a shifting reality over the past two years. Taking inspiration from the four distinct seasons of Northern China, and the memories Cui harbours of his hometown, the paintings point to the forgotten corners of China’s second and third tier cities. Through the use of vivid imagery and bright tonal varieties, Cui reflects on how these towns, ever more prevalent, have been hesitantly turned into bizarre, near surreal scenes by the repercussions of an era, embedded in development. Stemming from Cui’s position as a now distant onlooker, the viewer becomes privy to his personal perspective regarding his hometown, fleshing out at once a state of recollection as well as one of discontinuity.

Cui Xinming is a highly regarded emerging contemporary Chinese artist based in Chongqing. His work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Istanbul, Berlin, Beijing and Chengdu, amongst other locations. In 2010 he was nominated for the 1st Zhang Xiaogang Graduate Contemporary Art Scholarship and was a runner up for the 2nd Chinese Institute Annual Art Exhibition.

Edouard Malingue Gallery was founded in Hong Kong in 2010 to build a critical dialogue between Asian and international contemporary artists, both emerging and established, who combine aesthetic concern with conceptual enquiry, and work across different disciplines from video and installation to painting and sound. With spaces in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Edouard Malingue Gallery continues to present engaging solo exhibitions, international projects and art in public spaces.

BEAU Architects was founded in Hong Kong in 2014 by practitioners, Gilles Vanderstocken and Charlotte Lafont-Hugo. Their architectural work focuses on a rigorous process uncovering the meanings behind geometry, archetypes, and materiality. The office designed Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong amongst other projects with M+ and the Mill6 Foundation.