Jenny Holzer: Light Stream (19 September 2013 - 2 November 2013)

American artist Jenny Holzer will present Light Stream, a major exhibition of new and vintage work in her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, at Pearl Lam Galleries, which will open on 18 September, 2013. For this exhibition, Holzer draws upon her text series Truisms (1977–79), Living (1980–82), and Survival (1983–85), presenting Truisms and Survival for the first time in Chinese.

Jenny Holzer is one of the most respected contemporary artists working today, best known for large-scale public projections of text. Influenced by literature, society, and politics, her work explores notions of transparency, sexuality, morality, and power. Her texts take the form of declarations, quotes, and statements from many points of view, often inhabiting complex and controversial subject matter.

For Light Stream, Holzer selected phrases from Truisms, Living, and Survival to present on electronic signs and on stone benches. Truisms comprises over 250 single sentence declarations written by Holzer at the beginning of her career and crafted to resemble existing aphorisms. Originally printed on posters and anonymously pasted on buildings and walls across New York City in the 1970s,Truisms was Holzer's first body of text. Living references everyday, visceral topics, such as the body and personal relationships, to evoke notions of vulnerability within a fast-paced modern environment and the individual grappling with life-altering decisions. Survival, the first text series written specifically for electronic signs, is a cautionary series where each sentence instructs, informs, or questions in a more urgent tone.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is Holzer’s largest LED gallery work to date, which comprises over 25 LED elements. Light Stream (2013), also the title of the exhibition, was born of Holzer’s long-time desire to produce a swarming mass of texts in one work, and is realised for the first time with Pearl Lam Galleries. Using selections from all three series, the result is a pulsating, flashing heap of text with statements layered and wrapped around one another in frenetic light and colour. Chinese and English texts appear alongside each other, reflecting and encouraging dialogue within the exhibition.

Describing the work, Jenny Holzer explains, “Though I rely on minimalist configurations, for decades I have wanted to offer a massive, irrational, unpredictable heap of glittering displays. I am happy about the paradox—what appears wild, chaotic, and spontaneous is a greater technical puzzle and a more difficult challenge to realise. Pearl Lam Galleries and years of building precisely configured LED signs have made this new electronic wilderness possible.”

Holzer’s LED works are individually programmed to pulse at specific rates. By throwing light and colour, the LED pieces map the darkened gallery space.

Alongside the LED works, Holzer will present a selection of white marble benches, which are the first works she has produced in Chinese. With their connotations of monuments or Classical sculpture, the solid and memorial form of the marble works offers a dramatic contrast to the LEDs. Short statements such as “MONEY CREATES TASTE” and “DON’T PLACE TOO MUCH TRUST IN EXPERTS,” chosen for their particular resonance and impact, are carved in Chinese into the bench seats.

Jenny Holzer

For more than thirty years, Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including 7 World Trade Center, the Reichstag, the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her medium, whether formulated as a T-shirt, a plaque, or an LED sign, is writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work. Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters, and up to her recent light projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humour, kindness, and moral courage. Holzer received the Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in 1996. She holds honorary degrees from Ohio University, Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. She received the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2011. Holzer lives and works in New York.

Golnaz Fathi: The Living Road（15 September 2013 - 10 November 2013）

SHANGHAI－Pearl Lam Galleries Shanghai will present the first solo exhibition of Golnaz Fathi in China, illustrating the growing interest worldwide in Iranian art, initiated by major exhibitions at the Barbican Gallery, UK; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; and the forthcoming exhibition ‘Iran Modern’ at Asia Society in New York. Fathi is an influential member of a thriving new generation of multi-disciplinary artists born in Tehran since the 1970s. Entitled The Living Road, and opening to the public on 15 September 2013, the exhibition features 21 new works in a variety of media including pen on canvas, acrylic on canvas and LED light works, alongside two historic acrylic on canvas works which have been exhibited at Art Forum in Wiesbaden, Germany in 2011 and Tehran’s pavilion at the Shanghai Biennale in 2012 respectively.

Golnaz Fathi’s work draws on the discipline of Persian calligraphy reinterpreted through an abstract gestural style. Her work is also inspired by Abstract Expressionism and the work of Middle Eastern Modernists from the 50s and 60s who employed the written word as a pictorial element. Fathi’s work has been collected extensively by major public and private collections including the British Museum, London; the Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, India; The Farjam Collection, Dubai; and Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

The Living Road features a series of pen on canvas works inspired by the technique of Shiah Mashgh, which translates literally as ‘black practice’, the calligrapher’s warm-up exercise whereby letters are repeated over and over again until the paper is entirely covered in black ink. Golnaz Fathi sees this process as the most artistic part of traditional calligraphy. She says: “My artistic aim has been to transform calligraphy from words into forms. I treat the letters as a form—I make them float or dance on my canvas. Like a journey of sorts, I take the words up and down, moving to different places that end nowhere. The origin comes from my meditations; perhaps sometimes it ends in stillness, a stillness that talks. They can be read as a visual meditation or a form of prayer. Being restricted by so many rules in traditional calligraphy made me break all the rules and treat the letters just the way I want to. This inspiration comes from my own culture. I am proud of my country’s very rich cultural heritage which in turn has greatly inspired me.” Amongst the other media represented in the exhibition, the light boxes particularly highlight the unique forms in Fathi’s work as the glow of the letters and lines emerge from the bold black boxes.

Born in Tehran in 1972, the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war were predominant elements in the background of Fathi’s upbringing. The disturbing effects of these events cannot be dismissed from her work, which asks for pause and contemplation. She studied classical calligraphy at the Iranian Society of Calligraphy in Tehran, practicing writing Persian for up to eight hours a day for six years and is one of a small number of female Iranian artists to have trained at such a high level. She has received a number of awards including the Best Woman Calligraphist in Ketabat Style in 1995 by the Iranian Society of Calligraphy in Tehran, and was chosen by one of the juries at the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennale in 2011. She has also exhibited in museums and galleries in Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Dubai, Korea, Germany and London. In 2012, she was granted a residence permit in France and she currently lives and works in Tehran.

Pearl Lam Fine Art Galleries Shanghai

Pearl Lam Fine Art focuses on nurturing and promoting a stable of cross-cultural and cross-discipline Chinese artists with a select handful of international artists. These artists draw inspiration from their traditional values and Western influences, which in turn allow them to create a new aesthetic or visual language. As part of this mission, Pearl Lam Fine Art collaborates with renowned curators who present influential and groundbreaking shows that question perceptions of Chinese contemporary art and explore the crossing of cultures, East and West.

 Current Exhibition: Beyond Black and White

Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present Beyond Black and White, an exhibition showcasing works by eight Chinese contemporary ink artists. These artists are part of a growing circle in China that draws inspiration from traditional Chinese ink painting and its philosophy as well as Chinese calligraphy.

The artists in Beyond Black and White are all deeply indebted to Chinese culture and art history, using these traditions to guide their work and embracing a wide range of sources including Chinese calligraphy, landscape painting and poetry.  This illustrates the combination that has led to the popularity and re-evaluation of contemporary Chinese ink painting.

We will be introducing this Exhibition in greater detail soon!

Pearl Lam Galleries, 

181 Middle Jiangxi Road, G/F, 

Shanghai, China 

200002