Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong. They will present Georg Baselitz’s bronze sculpture Yellow Song (2013) from the Dark Side series. The artist now aged 76 and working with no assistance, first created this sculpture (weight 852 kg, height approx. 390 cm) in the same dimensions from a single tree-trunk, using a chain saw. The rings around the sculpture were not added subsequently, but carved from the trunk in the same process; the sculpture was then cast in bronze and patinated in black. The artist's hand is present in the rough surface; the black colour is reminiscent of burnt charcoal. Black patina was used on Venetian bronzes as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to protect them from the damp, salty air. A current exhibition in the British Museum in London (until 31 August) includes Baselitz's work, and in September 2014 a comprehensive solo exhibition of his paintings and sculptures opens in the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

They will also show portraits by the American artist Alex Katz (b 1927), who lives in New York. The striking, unmistakable style of his work, which belongs to Pop Art and American Realism, has exerted a considerable influence on art history. He held his first exhibition in the mid-1950s, and this year they are showing a retrospective of 45 years of his portraiture – currently in their gallery in Paris Pantin, and from the end of July in Salzburg. They have selected some of these works from the 1970s and '80s, as well as from the 2000s and the recent past.

Yan Pei-Ming's masterly paintings of two doves and an eagle in flight also form part of their presentation. The artist – who was born in Shanghai in 1960 and has lived in France since the age of 20 – takes short-lived snapshots from the modern media and transfers them, using a palette reduced to black and white, into the more lasting medium of painting. He will have his solo exhibition in the Beijing Centre for the Arts, to be held from 18 May until 23 June 2014.

-Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

Image: © Yan Pei-Ming
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac