Red Gate Gallery is proud to announce a new exhibition "Year of the Drago"'. Featuring new works by nineteen artists, this exciting group exhibition showcases the ambition and sensitivities of artists leading contemporary art in China today.

The first exhibition of 2012, Year of the Dragon represents a transition. Full of searching, imagining and documenting, it is a complex account which reveals that the present is a conflation of quotations from the past and a phantasmagoria of contemporary imaginings. The artists showing in the exhibition articulate the world around them with a mix of complex feelings ranging from cynical introspection to cautious optimism. Working across a range of media including new media, print media, painting and sculpture, each artist combines the dynamic richness of an inherited Chinese visuality with a charismatic personal vision.

"Year of the Dragon" showcases a new sculpture by Chen Qingqing who is inspired by court robes from the Han Dynasty and Confucianism. This exhibition also welcomes two new Red Gate artists: Chen Ke and Wang Qiang. Chen builds up beautiful layers of oil paint to reflect on the nostalgia of the Communist revolution in the 50’s and 60’s whereas Wang’s kaleidoscopic disc painting seems to echo cosmic abstraction. Other distinguished Red Gate artists featured in "Year of the Dragon" include He Kun’s distinct dragon coloured woodcut from the 2012 contemporary calendar print set (see image above), Gade, Guan Wei, Han Qing, Island6, Lv Peng, Shi Zhongying, Su Xinping, Tan Ping, Xie Fujin, Xie Guoping and Zhou Jirong.