MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg The Vocabulary of the Visible World – Painting May 15 to September 13, 2015 The focus of the collection of the Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, which was founded in 1999, and which lies in Duisburg's inner harbour is German painting since 1945. On show are masterpieces by Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, K.O. Götz, Anselm Kiefer, Markus Lüpertz, Gerhard Richter, Bernard Schultze, Fred Thieler and further artists from the Ströher Collection, who have been instrumental in shaping and influencing the development of art in post-war Germany. In keeping with this concept, the MKM is showing within the framework of the CHINA 8 exhibition paintings by ten Chinese artists whose careers we have followed for the past 20 years and who are established both in the Chinese and partly in the international art scene; among their number are Ding Yi, Yan Pei-Ming, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Enli and Zhang Xiaogang. Born largely in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinese artists on view in the MKM completed their studies at the beginning of the 1980s, before embarking upon their artistic careers. Zhang Xiaogang or Zeng Fanzhi, for example, are today among the internationally acclaimed stars within Chinese art, and have celebrated great success in the world's art metropolises, beyond the borders of China. Some twenty years ago both they and the majority of other artists featured in the show were members of the so-called “underground”. At the state academies they attended, they were instructed in the methodology of Social Realism. Although a realistic style of painting and outstanding technical craftsmanship are traditionally important qualities in Chinese society, in order to create art of enduring significance, more is required today: Zhang Xiaogang lends his works their distinctive character by fusing expressionist and surrealist elements which he translates into a new visual language. Zeng Fanzhi has honed a style which could best be described as symbolic expressionism. His landscape canvases reference traditional painting which he transforms both pictorially and thematically into multilayered visions of chaos. Evoking a mystical atmosphere in his work, the artist Ding Yi regards the process of painting as analogous to Zen-Buddhist meditation - an exercise towards attaining inner peace. These and other works on show in the Museum Küppersmühle illustrate the stylistic and thematic diversity of Chinese painting today which reveals itself as an “aesthetic vocabulary of the visible world”. With works by: Ding Yi, Mou Huan, Wang Guangle, Yan Pei-Ming, Yang Shaobin, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Enli, Zhang Fangbai, Zhang Huan, Zhang Xiaogang MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst Philosophenweg 55, 47051 Duisburg www.museum-kueppersmuehle.de Opening hours Admission Wednesday 2pm - 6pm Tuesday - Sunday, public holidays 11am - 6pm Closed Mondays and Tuesdays Single ticket 6 €, concession 4.50 €, pupils 2 € Children under 6 years, admission free