Ma Shuqing, Untitled, 2010‐2013, Oil on linen, 33 x 33 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

Osage Gallery is proud to present Touch, the first solo exhibition of artist Ma Shuqing in Hong Kong. The abstract paintings featured in the exhibition present a new departure point in the artist's oeuvre, where the artist turns away from his past pursuit of emotional expression through colours and lines, to an exploration and analysis of colour as a medium for an individual perception of time and space, ultimately seeking out possibilities of his own formal language.

Ma Shuqing often applies fields of colours to his canvas by alternatively pressing and scraping off layers of oil paints. The traces of this simultaneously accumulative and subtractive process are present in the edges of these paintings where each individual layer is partially visible. The thickness and volumes of the colours in his works are continually sculpted and re‐sculpted through these gestures, with the undulating layers and textures manifesting a sense of rhythm and movement within the paintings. The sculpting of such layers of colour also brings to the forefront the material properties of the paints used. The sense of light in the abstract paintings is in turn attained through this affirmation of the colour's materiality. Ma Shuqing thus equates colour to a sense of light and space in his paintings, transforming the painted plane into a transparent suspended surface, and extending the depths within the painting.

The layering, obscuring and revealing of colours and their relationships in the artist's work are a crystallization of the painter's cognition, intuition and experience, as much as the result of serendipitous or unexpected insights Ma gains in the process of exploring the constructs of time and space. Thus conceived through the artist's unique language and imbued with the artist's sentiments, the artist's explorations initiate a new dialogue between colour and colour, colour and space as well as colour and texture. In this way, Ma Shuqing's work is permeated with spatiotemporal poetics, and affords a suspension and depth that allows viewers limitless room for imagination.

Ma Shuqing, The Mediterranean, 2010‐2013, Oil on linen, 33 x 33 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

Ma Shuqing, Untitled, 2012‐2013, Oil on linen, 148 x 148 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

Artist Statement (excerpted)

The intersection of time and space always places us in an unknown position. Each stretch of new canvas is for me a new world, implying a new experience, a unique one.

Painting has always been my dream. I trust her so easily.

I believe that the soul finds sanctuary in the darkness, because my eyes are always seeking and touching brilliant colours.

Now, the curtain of night slowly falls, and my studio grows murky. I curl up in a sky blue couch and stare at the canvas I have just filled with lemon yellow, somewhat at a loss for what to do…

- Ma Shuqing, at his studio in Beijing's 798 Art Zone (January 1, 2014)

About Ma Shuqing

1956 Born in Tianjin, China. Works and lives in Beijing, China and Paris, France

Education

1994 MFA, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Germany

Studied freestyle painting from 1989 to 1994 under professor Ludi Troeger and Professor Jerry Zeniuk, earning the Kunstraum Daxer schorlarship.

1976 Graduated from Tianjin Arts and Crafts Vocational College, Tianjin, China

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2014 Touch, Osage Hong Kong, Hong Kong

2013 Color - Whispers, Art Hall, Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center, Tianjin, China

2011 Ma Shuqing Solo Exhibition, Kogo Art, Hangzhou, China

2011 Space - Painting, Shi Fang Fine Art, Düsseldorf, Germany

2011 Whispering to Myself, Shuimu Art Space, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

2011 Ma Shuqing Solo Exhibition, Art Space, German Embassy in Beijing, China

1994 Ma Shuqing Solo Exhibition, Galerie Klaus Lea, Munich, Germany

1994 Ma Shuqing Solo Exhibition, Galerie Finkel, Munich, Germany

Selected Group Exhibitions

2013 Paper - Being: the 2nd Exhibition of Works on Paper, Tianjin Art Museum, Tianjin, China

2013 Sanya Art Season, La Flora Plaza of Yalong Bay, Sanya, China

2013 Being Entangled with Paper: An International Survey of Works on/by/of/with /from Paper, Star Gallery, Beijing, China

2013 The Concept of Form and Fantasy, O2 Art, Beijing, China

2013 Mind and Hand in Accord - The 6th Exhibition of Chinese Abstract Art, Pifo Gallery, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

2013 Art Basel Hong Kong

2013 Art Beijing

2013 May Exhibition, Halcyon Gallery, Shanghai, China

2012 Integrate the new extension ‐ Returned Overseas Artists Painting Exhibition, World Art Museum, Beijing, China

2012 China‐Germany: Abstract Painting Today, the Gasper Ludwig Oplander Foundation, Dortmund, Germany

2012 In Time: Chinese Oil Painting Biennale 2012, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

2011 The Reality of Art, Esse Space, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

2011 Chinese Abstract Painting Now, Galerie Frank Schlag & Cie, Essen, Germany

2011 Duo Exhibition Ma Shuqing and Liang Quan, Galerie Faeth, Aschaffenburg, Germany

2010 Chinese Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden

2010 The Reason of Water Color Painting, CAFA Museum, Beijing, China

2010 Abstract Paintings, Yuandian Art Museum, Beijing, China

2010 Art Beijing

2010 Abstract Paintings, Hubei Art Museum, Wuhan, China

2010 Ma Shuqing and Zhang Zhaoda Duo Exhibition, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

2009 The Observation of Reality, Joy Art Gallery, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

2009 Duo Exhibition Ma Shuqing and Wang Xiaohui, Centre d'Art Elisabeth de Brabant, Shanghai, China

2009 Opening Exhibition, Eastlink Gallery, Beijing, China

2009 Awkward, Shuimu Art Space, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

2007 Art Beijing

2005 Beijing Biennale 2005, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

2003 Memza, Alexander Ochs Galleries, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China

Awards

1987 Work of Excellence, the 1st National Oil Painting Exhibition of China

1985 Work of Excellence, the 6th National Art Exhibition of China

Ma Shuqing, Early Summer, 2010‐2013, Oil on linen, 33 x 33 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

Curated by Huang Du

Huang Du is an independent curator who lives and works in Beijing. Huang Du was born in 1965, Shanxi Province, P. R. China. In 1988 he received his bachelor's degree in art history from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. From 1991 to 1992, he studied art history in Bologna University, Italy. In 2004, he obtained his PhD from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China.

Huang Du has published numerous critical articles and essays on contemporary art, mostly on international magazines and catalogues. As a speaker and jury member, he is invited to participate in many important international art symposiums and art awards. His major curatorial projects include: Open Your Mouth, Close Your Eyes: Beijing‐Berlin Art Exhibition (Beijing, 1995), The 2nd Seoul International Media Art Biennale 2002 (Seoul), China Pavilion of the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale 2004. China Contemporary: New Urban Realities (Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, The Netherlands, 2006), The 6th Shanghai Biennale 2006, Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves (ZKM, 2008, Germany), The 3rd Nanjing Triennial 2008 (Nanjing, China), Negotiations: The Second Today's Documents 2010 (Beijing), Jannis Kounellis: Translating China in 2011 (Today Art Museum, Beijing), Image Anxiety, PhotoEspana 2012 (Madrid, Spain) and the China Platform, Art Stage Singapore 2014 (Singapore).

About Osage Gallery

Osage Gallery was established in Hong Kong in 2004 and grew quickly to become one of Asia's largest commercial gallery groups. Osage has become well-known in art circles in Asiaand in the art world for its uncompromising support for the most challenging and criticallythought-provoking contemporary art.Osage Gallery is curatorially-driven and devoted to the exhibition and promotion of Asiancontemporary visual arts. It aims to be a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and thecreative expression of the artists and the active engagement of audiences by embracing aglobal, multidisciplinary and diverse approach to the creation, presentation andinterpretation of the arts of our time. It examines the questions that shape and inspire us asindividuals, cultures and communities through high quality programmes of research,exhibition and publication.

About the exhibition

Duration: 1 Mar - 1 Apr 2014

Venue: Osage Gallery

Opening Reception: 1 Mar 2014 Sat 16:00-18:00

Opening Hours: 10:30-18:30 Mond-Sat; 14:30-18:30 Sun

Tel: 852-27934817

Add: 4/F, Union Hing Yip Factory Bldg, 20 Hing Yip Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

Courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery.