Organizer: Long Museum
Venue: Long Museun West Bund multi-function hall
Sponsor: CHRISTIE'S
Host: Shen Qilan
Guest: Wang Wei, Frances Morris , Xiang Jing, Jenny Saville , Lisa Yuskavage
As the most powerful couple collectors in China, Mrs. Wang Wei and her husband, Mr. Liu Yiqian, have been engaged in art collection for over twenty years. They are the first mainland Chinese couple collectors ranking in ARTnews "Top 200" Collectors for two consecutive years. As world-renowned art collectors, Liu and Wang’s collection is systematically large, covering traditional Chinese art, modern and contemporary Chinese art, “red classics” as well as contemporary art of Asia and Europe.
Xiang Jing was born in Beijing in 1968. She graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Xiang now works and lives in Beijing. Her works are “representational and realist on the exterior, but in fact highly contemplative and inquisitive in the complexity of humanity and the value of spiritual life in our contemporary age”. Xiang’s artwork reveals a sense of insecurity, through which the misty nature of the modern human character and life itself are accentuated and reified. She seeks after the existential truth of life through her continued investigation of “internality” of human beings. In four successive phases, Mirror Image (1999-2002), Keep in Silence（2003-2005）, Naked Beyond Skin (2006-2008), Will Things Ever Get Better?（2009-2011）, Xiang Jing continues working around motifs such as identity issues, one’s psychological scene, the body, and the relationship between individuality and the exterior world.
Frances Morris holds a B.A. from the University of Cambridge and an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has been working at Tate Modern since 1987, and was appointed as the first female director of Tate Modern in 2016. Mrs. Morris has made an extremely important contribution to Tate as well as the art world in the past 30 years. She helps the museum expend its global reach, and greatly raise the awareness of women artists. Mrs. Morris has curated large Tate Modern shows of women artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin.
Lisa Yuskavage was born in 1962 in Philadelphia. She received her B.F.A. from the Tyler Schoolof Art, Temple University in 1984 and her M.F.A. from the Yale University in 1986. Yuskavage has the skill of an old master and the imagination of a manga illustrator. Over the past two decades, she has developed her own genre of the female nude immersed in utopian landscapes or dramatically lit interiors. The color-drenched alluring paintings she creates perfectly combine innocence and desire, which also bear witness to a re-emergence of the figurative in contemporary painting.
Shen Qilan received her Ph.D. from University of Münster, Germany. She is a renowned art critic with articles and columns featured in various media. She was the director of editorial department in Art World Magazine and later the chief editor of Art department at Insight Media. Mrs.Shen is now one of the editorial board members of Book Town. In 2014, she was invited by Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai to co-curate Aura of Poetry exhibition. In 2016, she was invited by the German foreign ministry to curate The Shapes of Power exhibition. Mrs. Shen is the academic consultant for Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou1906-1977. She continues making UnderstandA short film series and closely collaborates with various international cultural and art institutions on exhibitions and events.
Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge, England. She received her B.A. from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992. As one of the “Young British Artists (YBAs)”, Saville is best known for her monumental oil paintings depicting nudes. She is captivated by the endless aesthetic and formal possibilities of the materiality of the human body, and makes a highly sensuous and tactile impression of surface and mass. Her works are included in worldwide collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Saatchi Collection, London; Long Museum, Shanghai.
Shen Qilan received her Ph.D. from University of Münster, Germany. She is a renowned art critic with articles and columns featured in various media. She was the director of editorial department in Art World Magazine and later the chief editor of Art department at Insight Media. Mrs.Shen is now one of the editorial board members of Book Town. In 2014, she was invited by Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai to co-curate Aura of Poetry exhibition. In 2016, she was invited by the German foreign ministry to curate The Shapes of Power exhibition. Mrs. Shen is the academic consultant for Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou1906-1977. She continues making UnderstandA short film series and closely collaborates with various international cultural and art institutions on exhibitions and events.
