Nashunbatu
In Other Places: The Painting Practice of Nashunbatu
2023.09.23 - 11.12
TRIUMPH GALLERY is pleased to announce In Other Places: The Painting Practice of Nashunbatu, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, from September 23rd to November 12th, 2023. The exhibition, curated by Su Wei, showcases a chapter of Nashunbatu’s painting practice since his relocation to Germany in 2000, with more than 20 paintings on view.
The paintings of Nashunbatu demonstrate a peculiar synthesis: he has simultaneously applied on a single canvas an array of painterly techniques and modes of expression that he has mastered or continued to explore. It became almost impossible for the audiences to pinpoint the artist’s formal training background and stylistic preference. At the same time, Nashunbatu incorporates a variety of painterly “dialects” into his repertoire, formulating a singular creative practice marked by its incoherence.
Nashunbatu, who has been living in Germany for a while, made no effort to hide his interest in the “middle ground” and “multiculturalism” that transcend the influence of different contexts.The embodiment of such interest manifests in his painting by negating contexts, identities, and any accompanying factors, national or regional. His command over the imaginative space in his compositions comes more from a pursuit of decontextualization and intuition. On the other hand, aesthetic experience under the rendition of Nashunbatu presents itself as multifaceted: the picture and the mental and psychological space it entails are infinitely delayed by the critique and reconstruction of painting conventions he imbues into his compositions, while the introduction and clash of multiple painting “dialects turns” the aesthetic experience here into an eternal act that happens in other places/absent.
The paintings of Nashunbatu demonstrate a peculiar synthesis: he has simultaneously applied on a single canvas an array of painterly techniques and modes of expression that he has mastered or continued to explore. It became almost impossible for the audiences to pinpoint the artist’s formal training background and stylistic preference. At the same time, Nashunbatu incorporates a variety of painterly “dialects” into his repertoire, formulating a singular creative practice marked by its incoherence.
Nashunbatu, who has been living in Germany for a while, made no effort to hide his interest in the “middle ground” and “multiculturalism” that transcend the influence of different contexts.The embodiment of such interest manifests in his painting by negating contexts, identities, and any accompanying factors, national or regional. His command over the imaginative space in his compositions comes more from a pursuit of decontextualization and intuition. On the other hand, aesthetic experience under the rendition of Nashunbatu presents itself as multifaceted: the picture and the mental and psychological space it entails are infinitely delayed by the critique and reconstruction of painting conventions he imbues into his compositions, while the introduction and clash of multiple painting “dialects turns” the aesthetic experience here into an eternal act that happens in other places/absent.
Nashunbatu
Nashunbatu was born in 1969 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Inner Mongolia Normal University in 1989. From 2000 to 2006, he studied at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig, Germany, Where he was awarded the Scholarship of the Foundation for Cultural Heritage of Braunschweig (SBK) in 2006. Currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, he mainly works with contemporary oil paintings.
Formal analytic and thematic consideration of Nashunbatu’s work shows that the works articulate their quality at the two levels that are relevant to the medium of painting. A reflexive approach to the possibilities of painting after the end of painting, and a unique experience associatively legible at the thematic level, which can be read as a critical commentary on the current state of our relation to subject/self and the world, come together. The twin poles of the horizon of meaning in Nashun Nashunbatu’s art illustrates the potential of a contemporary approach to painting that interrelates a wide spectrum of relational fields and gives pictorial expression to virulent experiences of our condition as contemporary individuals.
Formal analytic and thematic consideration of Nashunbatu’s work shows that the works articulate their quality at the two levels that are relevant to the medium of painting. A reflexive approach to the possibilities of painting after the end of painting, and a unique experience associatively legible at the thematic level, which can be read as a critical commentary on the current state of our relation to subject/self and the world, come together. The twin poles of the horizon of meaning in Nashun Nashunbatu’s art illustrates the potential of a contemporary approach to painting that interrelates a wide spectrum of relational fields and gives pictorial expression to virulent experiences of our condition as contemporary individuals.
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Curator
Curator
Su Wei
Su Wei (born in Beijing) is an art writer, art historian and curator based in Beijing.
Su Wei's work in recent years focuses on re-constructing the narrative—and radical imagination—of contemporary Chinese art history, and explores the roots of the legitimacy and rupture of contemporary Chinese art history in a global context. Pivotal to his work is the attempt to take the “post-1949” as the key in understanding artistic production in a contemporary situation, and in so doing he seeks to re-define the stance and possibilities of art in nowadays China. He thus engages in an anti-establishment critical practice by mapping the limits, contextual clues and unconscious energies of the post-1949 art production, which figures the dual presence of decay and emptiness.
Su Wei's work in recent years focuses on re-constructing the narrative—and radical imagination—of contemporary Chinese art history, and explores the roots of the legitimacy and rupture of contemporary Chinese art history in a global context. Pivotal to his work is the attempt to take the “post-1949” as the key in understanding artistic production in a contemporary situation, and in so doing he seeks to re-define the stance and possibilities of art in nowadays China. He thus engages in an anti-establishment critical practice by mapping the limits, contextual clues and unconscious energies of the post-1949 art production, which figures the dual presence of decay and emptiness.