Initiators of contemporary art in Beijing in the 80’s, founders of the “Group of Stars”, Huang Rui, Wang Keping and Ma Desheng get together on the occasion of a unprecedented exhibition at the Magda Danysz Gallery. Interpreting Man as much as Nature, wood carvings, metal works or paintings of these three internationally recognized artists are complementary. They symbolize the first generation of Chinese contemporary artists.

Ma Desheng is a Chinese contemporary artist, born in Beijing in 1952. Painter, poet and performer. Ma Desheng lives in France for over 20 years. In 1979, Ma Desheng was a founding member of the "Stars" group, the first artistic avant-garde movement in China, alongside with Wang Keping, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Zhong Acheng, Ai Weiwei.

Huang Rui, born in 1952, is a Chinese artist known for his social and cultural criticism. He is widely considered one of the founding members of the Chinese Contemporary art movement, and continues to produce work that reflects the concerns of a highly socially engaged artist through historical references and satire of reality. He is one of the founders of the 798 center, one of the most important place for contemporary art in Beijing.

Wang Keping is a sculptor born in 1949 in Beijing, who currently lives and works in Paris. In 1979, Wang Keping was one of the founding member of the first non-conformist artist’s group in China, «The Stars» (Xing Xing). Wang Keping's unique wooden sculptures, including one that featured a Buddha-like Mao figure, shock the art world in Beijing in the late 70s and early 80s. Wang Keping continues to create these signature sculptures that juxtapose vivid emotion with a marked sense of introversion. In opposition to the canons of socialist realism, he defends an intimate approach to the man, and his sculptures are carrying a message of wisdom, which combines both a subtle eroticism and a call to the resistance of the individual. After several events organized by the group of "Stars", the Chinese legal system allowed him to exhibit his work resulting in an immediate public success.

Courtesy of Gallery Magda Danysz