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JEFFREY CHONG WANG & TOKUHIRO KAWAI | Double Solo Exhibition
DCG ROME | 16 October 2021 – 16 November 2021
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Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome is pleased to present the double solo exhibition by the two prominent artists, Beijing-raised and Canada-based Jeffrey Chong Wang and Japanese Tokuhiro Kawai. The exhibition will be inaugurated on the 16th of October 2021 at Via dei Pettinari 76, 00186, Rome and will run until November 2021.
The opening and presentation of these two extraordinary artists is the best way to honour Dorothy Circus Gallery’s 14th anniversary. The visual language and impressive technical and pictorial skills of Jeffrey Chong Wang and Tokuhiro Kawai represent what the Gallery has consistently developed and stood for since opening its doors in Rome in 2007.
As part of the Gallery’s “core concept” is its commitment to present the most intriguing contemporary international figurative art, as from the start with its focus on the new American surrealism and street art. In the past years, Dorothy Circus has broadened its attention on Asian Art, allowing the Gallery to become a protagonist in the Asian art market, which is fast evolving and strongly desired by collectors.
The introduction of the visual code of Asian art in the context of the DCG curatorial program has the role of completing the cycle of research and osmotic exchange between the languages of the hyper-contemporary. This introduction began with the expansion of the codes of Pop Surrealism in Europe. In today’s visual language, the codes of Pop Surrealism merge with Asian Surrealism, aiming to trace and reconnect with elements of a classical painting belonging to European culture, an increasingly pivotal and essential study reference for overseas artists and vice versa.
While Tokuhiro Kawai draws from classical Renaissance themes to elaborate a surreal fairytale, Jeffrey Chong Wang looks at Romanticism to articulate a cinematographic reflection. Both artists reconstruct the traditional imagery of classical paintings with contemporary elements with surrealist and urban references, creating a new hybrid style that offers a new vision of history and aesthetics.
In his new series entitled The Influence of Angels, Japanese artist Tokuhiro Kawai establishes a new “Renaissance”, retracing the great Masters Sandro Botticelli, Tiziano Vecellio and Hieronymus Bosch with a surreal and fairytale key.
Tokuhiro’s latest works on canvas and the new peculiar series of painted windows reveal an eccentric universe constructed only by the artist. A magical parallel realism whose job is to help us look over our adventures like the ones of the fantastical heroes of our childhood and find the strength of the portrayed angels in the artist works. At first glance, the character appears unattainable and distant. However, the characters in Tokuhiro’s series soon become a reality thanks to the artist’s meticulous attention to detail and his sublime technique. The artist’s message transpires in the gaze and facial expressions that belong to us, in the continuous commitment of man to want himself capable of new challenges that feed on dreams.
Jeffrey Chong Wang accompanies us in a story characterized by an almost voyeuristic intimacy by painting his subjects in timeless rooms and atmospheres scattered with architectural details and symbolic elements that are equal protagonists of the mystery surrounding them.
The characters, captured in their everyday life, observe the viewer with an intense and genuine gaze so that we find ourselves unable to divert ours. Jeffrey’s cinematographic compositions recall the stories of China suspended between past and future, between history and present, in which the only contemporary element is the human feeling that makes us equal and close.
The result of this contrast is worn casually by the characters in Wong’s paintings which, as if to flaunt his irony and extravagance, makes them appear to us as if they have just been spied on with binoculars as they move around their homes. Hence, the artist never reveals enough to put us at ease, giving us the desire of wanting to see more.
Through the body of works of One Night in the Zoo & The Influence of Angels the profound artistic language enters the hearts of the viewer, sublimating contemporary reality and involving the emotions of the public as an indispensable page of the human story in an osmotic exchange in which the artist leaves the role of final perception to the attentive gaze of his much loved muse: Humanity.