“With no one coming in or out of the country for three years these exhibitions provide a window into one of the most significant periods in recent Chinese history” - Nick Simunovic, Gagosian’s Director, Asia

Two simultaneous though very different contemporary painting exhibitions at Gagosian - one in Hong Kong and the other at the gallery’s Grosvenor Hill space in London - give insight into what artists in mainland China have been thinking about and creating over the last three years.

In London, Hao Liang’s exhibition “Sad Zither” presents intricate colour gradations and subtle, semi-abstract, narrative compositions.

“in traditional Chinese painting there was never pure figuration or abstraction” - Hao Liang

The fourteen works were made in Beijing over the last two years and explore themes and symbolism from literary sources such as Dante and Borges and Chinese poets Tao Yuanming, Du Mu and Li Shangyin - the last of whose poem gives the exhibition its name.

Liang uses the methods and motifs of traditional Chinese ink wash painting, giving them a distinctly contemporary angle. We see his perspective on the localised physical changes in the seasons, with fleeting moments and details of light placed within the grander scale of history, geography and the psychological realm - “the complexity of time and space lead to a need to look at a more metaphysical way of looking at the world” says the artist. The works have a physical and emotional depth and a degree of psychological uneasiness.

In Hong Kong meanwhile there is a shared sense of unease and dislocation in an exhibition where guest curator Yang Zi (former curator and head of public programs at UCCA, Beijing) has brought together new works by Chinese artists Owen Fu, Jiang Cheng, Li Hei Di, Li Weiyi, Nabuqi, Song Yuanyuan, Su Yu-Xin, Wang Haiyang, Wang Xiaoqu, Wang Xingwei, and Zhang Zipiao.

The exhibition’s title “Uncanny Valley” is inspired by the theory proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 that a humanoid object bearing either a very high or very low level of resemblance to a real person will prompt feelings of affinity, while one distinguished by a close but flawed similarity may instead provoke uneasiness or revulsion.

The exhibition explores the emergence of these themes in contemporary paintings, sculptures, and videos by Chinese artists. These works endow the human figure with psychological, existential, and symbolic significance, combining an embodied intimacy with an intentional and specific lack of cohesion that stands apart from most art historical representations of the human form.

“At first, when you look at the works from afar, they might seem perfect, but if you look closely, you’ll feel this creepiness ... every piece in the exhibition has this quality, especially when you look at the details. I think it also relates to the past three years, where the artists have felt this [sense of uneasiness]” - Yang Zi.

Both exhibitions are welcome opportunities to see Chinese art after too long a break.

picture credits: Sad Zither installation view © Hao Liang. Photo: Lucy Dawkins; All things © Hao Liang. Courtesy Gagosian; Uncanny Valley installation view. Photo: Martin Wong, Courtesy Gagosian;Panorama Study © Li Weiyi. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian