Warehouse Story VII
Artists: Gabriel Lester, Jin Haofan, and Kelvin Kyungkun Park
Duration: March 25 to May 8, 2021
Venue: 4A-204, 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Vanguard Gallery is pleased to present Gabriel Lester, Jin Haofan, and Kelvin Kyungkun Park in the seventh instalment of “Warehouse Story”.
Gabriel Lester is a Dutch artist whose works consist of installations, sculptures, performances and films, as well as other activities including commissioned art in public space, physical structures and design. Lester’s creations originate from his desire to tell stories and to establish contexts and settings that support these stories or propose their own narrative interpretation. His vocabulary is characterized as cinematographic, without necessarily employing film or video as a medium. However, just like moviemaking, Lester’s practice has come to embrace and utilize all imaginable media and talent. Open ended, unresolved, seeking to keep mysteries alive and without explicit messages or singular ideas, his works proposes ways to relate to the world, how it is (re-) presented and what mechanisms constitute our perception and understanding of it. With emphasis on human existence and experience, Lester’s projects aim to sharpen and flex the mind. This time we will show his photography and video works from two series.
As a member of the Jiu Society, Jin Haofan has created an ambiguous barrier between his own practice and the artist group’s collective creations in terms of style and subject matter. Jin Haofan focuses on oil painting which, in his own words, is a representation of views and sites based on description or recollection of the surroundings. However, the images on the canvas challenges our definition of the “surrounding” as a physical idea, or they goes beyond the realm of the physical reality that we are more familiar with. In this exhibition, we will encounter the latest series of painting from the artist.
Kelvin Kyung Kun Park’s multidisciplinary practice extends from video and documentary to installation. His works encompass the structural problems tangled up in Asian societies and its distinct manifestation in South Korea. Dealing with topics that have palpable masculine traits that mirror the characteristics of the society—such as metal workshops, steel mills, shipbuilders and car factories—he uses his own cinematic language, often tinted with bold colors, that is obsessed with the superficial, physical, and visual aspects of his subjects. However, what underpinning is the artist’s contemplation of the social mentality and the subtle collectivist mindset of individuals.
About the Artist
Gabriel Lester
Born in 1972 in Amsterdam, Gabriel Lester is a visual artist and director. Now lives and works in Netherlands. Gabriel Lester’s works across various disciplines including music, cinema, installation, sculpture, architecture and performance. Many of his works evolve around the very nature of the media of our time, and transform the space and time through meticulously altering the media and narrative forms. Strongly influenced by cinema and mime, Gabriel Lester’s works challenge the reality of perception and stimulate on collective imagination through constructing and creating theatrical illusions. “My work represents a field of tension.” Lester has explained. “It is either implicitly narrative, explicitly visual or both at the same time. My works of art rarely convey a single explicit message or idea, rather they suggest ways to relate to the world.”
Jin Haofan
Jin Haofan was born in Guangdong Province in 1987. He graduated from Oil Painting Department from Sichuan Fine Art Institue in 2010. Jin now works and lives in Shenzhen, China. Recent exhibitions include: Shenzhen biennale of Contemporary Art, Shenzhen, China(2017); Good Night, ldiot, Tenjinyama Art Studio, Sapporo, Japan(2016 solo exhibition); Sullivan’s Attic, MOU Art, Beijing,China(2016); MTRRAGE(with He Shaotong), Gallery 55, Shanghai, China(2015 solo exhibition).
Kelvin Kyung Kun Park
Kelvin Kyung Kun Park is an artist based in Seoul, Korea, working primarily in the medium of film & video, photography, and installations. In 2018, he won 2018 BIFF Mecenat Award (Documentaries). He has screened his highly acclaimed first full-length film, “Cheonggyecheon Medley”, 2010, at various international venues, including the Berlin Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, Warsaw Planet Doc Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Hot Docs, among others. Park’s video installation works have been shown at the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul and Daegu Art Museum, Arko Art Gallery, Opsis Art Gallery, and the 2012 Taipei Biennale. Park followed his debut up with “A Dream of Iron”, which debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film featuring a series of visual tableaux filmed at the Pohang Steel Company and Hyundai Shipyard, won the NETPAC Award at Berlinale and subsequently played at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Sharjah Bienniale. Recent exhibitions include: Busan Biennale 2018, Busan, Korea(2018); Our Bright Future—Cybernetic Fantasy, Nam June Paik Art Center , Seoul, Korea(2017); A Dream of Iron, Sin Ricoh Gallery, Seoul, Korea(2016 solo exhibition); Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea(2016 solo exhibition); Intuitive Landscape, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea(2016 solo exhibition); ARTSPECTRUM 2016, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea(2016 solo exhibition); Brilliant Memories, Buk Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul ,Korea(2016); Korea: 70th Anniversary of Liberation, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea(2016); Resonating Triangle, ARARIO Museum, JEJU, Korea(2016); Obejectology II: Make, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea(2016).
