Chambers Fine Art Beijing is pleased to announce the opening of Make it New, a group show of work by young artists not previously shown at Chambers. The exhibition title comes from the American poet Ezra Pound who claims to have based his command to young artists on an inscription engraved on the bathtub of the 18th century BCE Emperor Cheng Tang, founder of the Shang Dynasty. Here we are presenting the work of seven artists - Mi Mai, Su Zhiguang, Yang Dawei, Ye Funa, Zeng Yang, Zhang Dun and Zhu Changhai - who work in a variety of media including painting, video and photography. A visually exciting range of works offers glimpses into the ways that younger artists are ‘making it new’; how they are developing their own creative vocabularies and new conceptual approaches.

Ye Funa (1986, Yunnan) shows her Family Album series in which she stages split-screen video performances that re-enact period family photographs. A gentle exploration of the multiple nature of personal identity, these works create a thought-provoking narrative of shared family relationships across the decades. Zeng Yang (1981, Kunming) also creates narratives that explore the ‘structure ‘and ‘order’ of human affairs. In circular kaleidoscopic canvases fragments of stories circulate. With no defined beginning or end, the works offer intriguing multiple narrative possibilities as the viewer enters and leaves the sequences of images at a place of his or her own choosing. Mi Mai (1982, Hunan) and Yang Dawei (1983, Liaoning) come from opposite ends of the country and offer distinct visual approaches. Mi Mai’s Random Series are remarkably coherent and colorful abstract compositions that are actually generated through a random digital process of the artist’s own devising. Meanwhile, the lush paintings of Yang Dawei offer glimpses of landscapes of China’s North East which he treats both with tact and a surprising audacity. This is most clearly seen in Red Landscape where the artist’s impulsive treatment belies a strong sense of reason and order. Zhang Dun (1979, Liaoning) presents an elegant and rational large scale pencil drawing that nevertheless has the capacity to unsettle the viewer with its desolate factory buildings, abandoned rail tracks and lonely locomotive sheds. In contrast the obsessive, graphic imagery of Su Zhiguang (1983, Guangdong) suggests an internal world and a persistent personal questioning. Finally, Zhu Changhai (1976, Beijing) presents photographs of objects placed on motorized turntables as they dematerialize in front of our eyes, converting familiar forms into dynamic simulacra.

Over the past decade Chambers Fine Art has been at the forefront of introducing Chinese artists’ work to the attention of international audiences. More recently Chambers has engaged in a concerted effort to include the work of promising young artists to its roster of established names. Our conviction is that among the artists presented in Make it New we will see some of the future important names of the upcoming generation.