Since 2012, Leo Gallery has held an annual exhibition called New Force, which aims to promote young and upcoming artists from mainland China, who are on their way to becoming rising stars of the art world. Despite being at the beginning of their professional careers, they have readily shown their artistic potential and visions of the contemporary world. Leo gallery intends on celebrating these artists and their work by supporting this new force of contemporary artists emerging from China .
"Zhang Ning's sculptural works and artistic language are greatly influenced by his riding travels through Tibet; Li Yiwen's paintings commemorate grey and silver space left in derelict buildings and building components, to give reference to the meaning of deserted time and space; Zhao Yiqian will show paintings and readymade pieces, two-and three-dimensional spaces are featured in his paintings to draw attention to fragments of spaces that we may not have noticed before; Xu Dawei depicts interior spaces with mysterious creatures, forcing audiences to consider abstract concepts of our everyday life through juxtaposing images. Four young artists from the 80's, Li Yiwen, Zhao Yiqian, Xu Dawei and Zhang Ning, use their different artistic techniques to portray different visual dialogues between character, language and space. "
