MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst

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