GALLERY MISSION Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. With spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York City (in Chelsea and on Madison Avenue), the gallery was the first to focus exclusively on the rise of globalization in contemporary art. The gallery represents painters, sculptors and photographers from around the world. They each work in different mediums and use diverse techniques, but share a passion for cross-cultural dialogue. The gallery is renowned for its support of cultural activities—including poetry readings, book launches, music performances and film screenings—that further its mission of East-West exchange.
MIYA ANDO
A descendant of Bizen sword makers, New York-based artist Miya Ando spent her childhood among Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan, and later, in California. Best known for her sublime metal paintings, Ando combines the traditional techniques of her ancestry with modern industrial technology, skillfully transforming sheets of metal into ephemeral, abstract paintings suffused with color. The focus of Ando’s artistic practice is the intrinsic connection between the human sphere and the natural world. “My interest is in creating work that allows viewers to experience a relationship to nature and to be truly in the moment as they encounter the transitory qualities of light,” Ando says. “I want to draw people into a slowed-down environment with work that is experiential and employs the visual vocabulary of natural phenomena and transformation.” Transformation—both in the physical and the metaphysical sense—is the unifying element in all of Ando’s work. To produce the light-reflecting gradients on her metal paintings, Ando applies heat, sandpaper, grinders, acid and patinas to the metal canvases, irrevocably altering the material’s chemical properties. It’s by an almost meditative daily repetition of these techniques that Ando is able to subtract, reduce and distill her concept until it reaches its simplest form. The resulting works explore the duality of metal and its ability to convey strength and permanence, yet in the same instance, capture the fleetingness of light and the transitory nature of all things. Miya Ando has a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and attended Yale University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery. She apprenticed with the master metalsmith Hattori Studio in Japan, followed by a residency at Northern California’s Public Art Academy. Her work has been shown worldwide, including at the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, California; in a show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum; and in an exhibition at the Queens Museum, New York. In 2015, a largescale installation, Emptiness the Sky (Shou-Sugi-Ban), was included in Frontiers Reimagined, a Collateral Event of the 56th Venice Biennale. Miya Ando has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture in London built from World Trade Center steel to mark the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, for which she was recently nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. Awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2012. Born in Los Angeles, 1973 | Lives and works in New York 4
Kasumi 60.30 Gold Red, 2017, dye, pigment, resin and urethane on aluminum, 30 x 60 inches/76.2 x 152.4 cm 5
Kasumi December Green Blue, 2017, pigment, resin and urethane on aluminum, 36 x 36 inches/91.5 x 91.5 cm 6
Mizuumi Lake Dark, 2018, pigment, resin and urethane on aluminum, 48 x 48 inches/122 x 122 cm 7
Kasumi Mist Red 2.2.1, 2017, dye, pigment, resin and urethane on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 8
Kasumi Februrary 2.2.6, 2017, dye, pigment, resin and urethane on aluminum, 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm 9
Gold Silver River Moon, 2018, dye, pigment, resin, silver and urethane on stainless steel, 48 x 48 inches/122 x 122 cm 10
Kumo Spring Cloud 4.4.7, 2018, dye on aluminum composite, 48 x 48 inches/122 x 122 cm 11
EDWARD BURTYNSKY
Photographer Edward Burtynsky chronicles human impact on nature in his disarmingly beautiful images of industrial landscapes around the world. Burtynsky’s painterly, often abstract photographs, frequently shot from an aerial perspective, show the massive scale of environmental devastation. Burtynsky began photographing nature in the early 1980s. His early works were intimate explorations of Canada’s unspoiled landscapes. By the late 1980s, however, he turned away from the quickly disappearing natural terrain, realizing that this was the world we were losing not the one we were to inherit. Instead, he began to investigate industrial incursions into land with arresting results. His most recent series, Water, begun in 2007, is his largest and most ambitious project to date. It documents the scale and impact of manufacturing and human consumption on the world’s water supplies. In 2015, Colorado River Delta #2, one of the works from this series, was included in Frontiers Reimagined, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale. Edward Burtynsky was recognized with a TED Prize in 2005. In 2006 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors. He holds six honorary doctorate degrees and his distinctions include the National Magazine Award, the MOCCA Award, the Outreach Award at the Rencontres d’Arles and the Applied Arts Magazine Complete Book Photography Award. In 2006, Edward Burtynsky was the subject of the award-winning documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. His newest film, Watermark, debuted in 2013. Edward Burtynsky’s works are in the collections of more than fifty museums worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; The Photographer’s Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 1955 | Lives and works in Toronto
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Salt Pan #13, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India, 2016, chromogenic color print, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 163 cm 13
Oil Bunkering #2, Niger Delta, 2016, chromogenic color print, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 163 cm
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ZHENG LU
The gravity-defying sculptural works of Zheng Lu are deeply influenced by his study of traditional Chinese calligraphy, an art form he practiced growing up in a literary family. Zheng Lu uses language as a pictorial element, inscribing the surface of his stainless-steel sculptures with thousands of Chinese characters derived from texts and poems of historical significance. To create his metal sculptures, the artist begins with a plaster base. He then laser-cuts characters into metal, and in a fashion similar to linking chainmail, uses heat to connect the pictographs so that they can be shaped to the support. The resulting works are technically astonishing; their fluid, animated forms are charged with the energy (qi) of the universe, belying their steel composite. Zheng Lu graduated from Lu Xun Fine Art Academy, Shenyang, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture in 2003. In 2007, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, while also attending an advanced study program at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. Zheng Lu has participated in numerous exhibitions in China and abroad, including at the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow; Musée Océanographique, Monaco; Musée Maillol, Paris; the National Museum of China, Beijing; the Long Museum and the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai. In 2015, the artist had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, one of the leading institutions in the region. His most recent large-scale solo exhibition, titled Re-sist-ance, was on view at the Long Museum in Shanghai in 2016. Born in Chi Feng, Inner Mongolia, 1978 | Lives and works in Beijing
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Water in Dripping No. 12, 2014, stainless steel, 82.7 x 63 x 47.2 inches/210 x 160 x 120 cm 17
Water in Dripping No. 7 - Condensing Flow, 2017, stainless steel, 29.5 x 17.7 x 24 inches/75 x 45 x 61 cm 18
Water in Dripping - Spatter, 2017, stainless steel, 13.8 x 11.4 x 26.8 inches/35 x 29 x 68 cm 19
Water in Dripping - Rondo, 2017, stainless steel, 46.5 x 68 x 44 inches/180 x 120 x 130 cm
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SOHAN QADRI
The late artist, poet and Tantric guru Sohan Qadri was one of the few modern painters of note deeply engaged with spirituality. He abandoned representation early on, incorporating Tantric symbolism and philosophy into his vibrantly colored minimalist works. He began his process by covering the surface of heavy paper with structural effects by soaking it in liquid and carving it in stages with sharp tools while applying inks and dyes. As a result, the paper was transformed from a flat surface into a three-dimensional medium. The repetition of careful incisions on the paper was an integral part of his meditation. Having lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, Qadri was one of India’s many post-Independence artists who formed a sprawling diaspora. He once said, “I did not want to confine myself to one place, nation and community….My approach to life has been universal, and so is my art.” Qadri was initiated into yogic practice at age seven in India, his birthplace. In 1965, he left India and began a series of travels that took him to East Africa, North America and Europe. After settling in Copenhagen in the 1970s, Qadri participated in more than forty solo shows, in Mumbai, Vienna, Brussels, London, Oslo, Stockholm, Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York. Sohan Qadri’s works are included in the British Museum, London; the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts; the Rubin Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; as well as the private collections of Cirque du Soleil, Heinrich Böll and Dr. Robert Thurman. In 2011, Skira Editore published the monograph Sohan Qadri: The Seer. Born in Chachoki, Punjab, India, 1932; died 2011 | Lived and worked in Copenhagen and Toronto
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Amashi VI, 2008, ink and dye on paper, 55 x 39 inches/140 x 99 cm 23
Adya IV, 2009, ink and dye on paper, 39 x 27 inches/99 x 68.5 cm 24
Ratna IV, 2010, ink and dye on paper, 55 x 39 inches/140 x 99 cm 25
Amrita IV, 2007, ink and dye on paper, 55 x 39 inches/140 x 99 cm
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HIROSHI SENJU Japanese-born painter Hiroshi Senju is noted worldwide for his sublime waterfall and cliff images, which are often monumental in scale. He combines a minimalist visual language rooted in Abstract Expressionism with ancient painting techniques unique to Japan. Senju is widely recognized as one of the few contemporary masters of the thousand-year-old nihonga style of painting, using pigments made from minerals, ground stone, shell and corals suspended in animal-hide glue. Hiroshi Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an Honorable Mention Award at the Venice Biennale (1995), and has participated in numerous exhibitions including The New Way of Tea, curated by Alexandra Munroe, at the Japan Society and the Asia Society in New York (2002); Paintings on Fusuma at the Tokyo National Museum (2003); and Frontiers Reimagined at the Venice Biennale (2015). He was recently awarded the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for contributions to art. In May 2017 he was honored with the Isamu Noguchi Award. Public installations include seventy-seven murals at Juko-in, a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, and a monumental waterfall at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The Benesse Art Site of Naoshima Island also houses two large-scale installations. The artist has just completed forty-four fusuma for the Kongōbu-ji temple at Mount Koya, Japan. Senju’s work is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; the Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo; Tokyo University of the Arts; and the Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido. In 2009, Skira Editore published a monograph of his work titled Hiroshi Senju. The Hiroshi Senju Museum Karuizawa in Japan opened in 2011. Born in Tokyo, 1958 | Lives and works in New York 28
At World’s End #21, 2017, acrylic and natural pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 57.3 x 35.2 inches/145.6 x 89.4 cm 29
Waterfall, 2018, acrylic and natural pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 57.3 x 44.2 inches/145.5 x 112.3 cm
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Waterfall, 2014, acrylic pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.4 x 102 inches/194 x 259 cm
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At World’s End #6, 2017, acrylic and natural pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 102 inches/193.8 x 259.1 cm
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At World’s End #11, 2017, acrylic and natural pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 64 x 51.3 inches/162.6 x 130.3 cm
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CHUN KWANG YOUNG Chun Kwang Young began his career as a painter. He began to experiment with paper sculpture in the mid-1990s and over time his work has evolved in complexity and scale. The development of his signature technique was sparked by a childhood memory of seeing medicinal herbs wrapped in mulberry paper tied into small packages. Chun’s work subtly merges the techniques, materials, and traditional sentiment of his Korean heritage with the conceptual freedom he experienced during his Western education. Chun Kwang Young received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Hongik University, Seoul and a Master of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art, Pennsylvania. His work is in numerous public collections, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations, New York; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Society Building, Pennsylvania; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, and the Seoul Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Malta. He was named Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, in 2001 and in 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Prize in the 41st Korean Culture and Art Prize by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Born 1944 in Hongchun, Korea | Lives in works in Seongnam, Korea
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Aggregation 17 - DE096 (Star 33), 2017, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 51.2 inches/130 cm tondo 39
Aggregation 10 - JL020 Red, 2010, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 44.9 x 76.8 inches/114 x 195 cm 40
Aggregation 09 - MY024B, 2009, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 52 x 77.2 inches/132 x 196 cm 41
Aggregation 09 - A016, 2009, mixed media with Korean mulberry paper, 64.2 x 51.6 inches/163 x 131 cm
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FERNANDO BOTERO Fernando Botero is internationally renowned for his paintings and sculptures depicting rotund humans and animals. Referencing Latin-American folk art, Botero applies brightly colored paint to canvas without a trace of brushwork. This enhances his subjects’ inflated shapes and creates the appearance of a smooth surface. His cast-bronze sculptures of a similar subject matter are an extension of his paintings. Botero’s work has been included in over one hundred exhibitions worldwide and is collected by major international museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée Maillol, Paris; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and the National Museum of Colombia, Bogotá. Born in Medellin, Colombia, 1932
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Reclined Woman, 2016, bronze, 132.7 x 76.4 x 78 inches/337 x 194 x 198 cm 45
S U N D A R A M TA G O R E G A L L E R I E S new york new york hong kong singapore
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President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Sales director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Contributing editor: Kieran Doherty
W W W. S U N DA R A M TAG O R E . C O M Text © 2018 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © 2018 Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.