SHANG HUINING solo exhibition "I'm looking at you with summer eyes."

June 27 - July 7, 2024
1-7 pm
Closed on Mon and Tue.
*reception：June 29, 5-7pm
*Anyone can participate in the reception.

Shimokitazawa Arts is pleased to announce, SHANG HUINING solo exhibition "I'm looking at you with summer eyes". SHANG HUINING was born in Shandong Province, China, 1992. She studied literature in China and read Mishima Yukio and other Japanese literatures. She became very attracted to Japanese literature that delicately expressed the human heart, such as personal novels, and decided to come to Japan. In Japan, she majored in oil painting at Musashino Art University and graduated in 2023. Her graduation work, "Dance with Thunder" used free-flowing brushstrokes to depict humans, animals, and plants dancing and mixing in a swirling manner. Even though they were all struggling in the chaos of all living beings, we could sense that she was in a state of mastery, believing that this is life and the world itself.
SHANG HUINING currently works in a different industry than art, but has found an atelier that she likes and continues to create. Carrying a camera with her, she release the shutter when she feels "life" in everyday places such as parks, streets, and rooms. Although she refers to photographs, she always focuses on the "movement" of life in her paintings. Sometimes dynamically, sometimes secretly, the dignified sparkle of light emitted by life is captured on the screen. There, you can also feel the gaze of the SHANG HUINING, who is trying to affirm the finite nature of life as it is.
This exhibition will be SHANG HUINING's first solo exhibition. Please take a look at SHANG HUINING's painting world, which celebrates the pale, ephemeral and powerful "life" and attempts to express it freshly.

Artist Statement

When I was a child, I loved summer very much.
I feel nostalgic for the midsummer days of the city where I lived.
I've been waiting all year. Summer days are hot, strong, and full of life.

I keep telling myself I have to enjoy, I have to enjoy.
That thought is now a kind of obsession.
If I don't enjoy myself to the fullest, this summer will be over in the blink of an eye.

As I grew older, I gradually came to understand why I love that cruel summer.
Summer is the season when countless lives are born. That's why it's full of death.
It's like a momentary paradise. There is no eternity here. Flowers, grass, and insects all die soon. Only a faint lingering scent remains.

I think summer is beautiful like that.

There is only one reason why I draw.
I just want to convey to others the way I see and feel life.
I want to depict the lives that lived strongly in the summer.
I want to dedicate my paintings to this paradise that only lasts for a moment.
I have to enjoy myself, I muttered.

SHANG HUINING

Born in Shandong Province, China, 1992.
2023　BFA, Musashino Art University, College of Art and Design, Department of Oil Painting, Tokyo

Favorite artists：
Paul Klee, Kiki Smith, Edward Gorey, Yamamoto Yoko, Saito Meo, Yuri B. Norstein, Jan Švankmajer, Okazaki Kyoko, Terayama Shuji etc.

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