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A ‘Summer Palette’ with feminine strokes
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HIDDEN in a quaint historic building in the former French concession area, Noeli Gallery is truly a gem in the Shanghai art scene. Currently, the gallery is presenting an exhibition titled “Summer Palette,” featuring artists Li Li, Maud Boesen and Kim Yongwon.
The exhibition features crisp colors such as golden ochre and chartreuse, hence the name, and proudly displays a prevalent theme of femininity. The female perspective is not noticeable at face value, but it manages to creep under your skin in a permeating blaze.
At first glance, Li’s paintings of girls are outfitted in poppy hues and brightly lipsticked pouts. However, the art contains an intriguing message about what it means to be a woman.
“Each Li Li girl is actually (the artist) tracing her life through different periods … (representing) all kinds of different moods and emotions for women,” explains Noeli Zhang, owner of the gallery. “Many female visitors to the gallery find solace in the diversity of the characters, depicting the multifaceted changeability of women.”
Yongwon, from South Korea, has created a series of sweeping landscapes with strong Oriental influences using an unlikely medium — lace.
Her artworks are gently backlit with LED lights, reflecting “different light conditions and seasons.” The central ideology of the pieces ties in to the “iceberg theory,” Zhang says. The austere mountains represent “20 percent of a person” — the visible, conscious aspect. The rest is subconscious, lying beneath the water’s filmy surface.
The meaning is: If you delve a little deeper, you can unearth dormant truths about yourself. Lace, she says, is the ideal medium. “It’s a hiding part of your body but an exposing one as well.”
Boesen, an artist from Denmark, has fashioned the most abstract pieces out of the group. Fortunately, these brave swashes of color leave a lot of room for interpretation.
Through the brushstrokes, one can glimpse anthropomorphic animals and sad girls decked in red dresses. Zhang says the animals are difficult to notice “because they are hiding, but then you realize that actually this is your instinct, like an animal. Then you realize, oh actually I can be that strong. Actually I can be that romantic. You can be all of that.”
Moreover, this specific artist appears to have undergone significant changes or an epiphany, as indicated by her sudden change in style from more concrete structures to a stream of consciousness. The recent work expresses an expanded state of awareness.
“You don’t really know all your characteristics unless you experienced something,” which can test your boundaries and unleash surprising new aspects of your personality, she says.
The featured artists cover many stories, but all in all they are strung together by the metaphorical red strand.
The “Summer Palette” exhibition is an emblem of Zhang’s gallery and successfully characterizes the distinct element of femininity at play.
Another thing that sets the gallery apart is the eclectic mix between European and Chinese art. Zhang says she “experienced Western techniques and approaches, but the state of mind is still quite Oriental.”
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