Lin Ke's Swimming, a commissioned work for G Museum in Nanjing, is the artist's largest and most ambitious Sky Painting made to date. Sky Paintings is a series that the artist produced as a response to the conundrum of how to paint in the age of digital technology. Here Lin has resurrected a discarded image file of a sea of swimmers as a mammoth mural that becomes an architectural intervention in the space of the G Museum. The original image file has been edited so that only the essential components remain, creating in the artist's mind a perfect painting. We see gleeful swimmers cavorting in an all over composition and ocean of checkered marks. In Photoshop the bottom layer is marked by a checkered pattern, signifying that no more pictorial information exists. Over the original image the artist as also painted lines to articulate some of the swimmers and their movements. The work blown up to scale is reminiscent of the ceilings of Roman cathedrals with angels flying above, except here the artist has used industrial materials and state of the art UV printing techniques. The angelic quality of the swimmers is even more pronounced by the G Museum's mammoth space and birds view of the city which the artwork both obscures and accentuates.

BANK is honored to announce that Jin Shan's participation in the dual exhibition "trance" at HOW Art Museum Shanghai with the opening on Dec 19. The show features a spontaneous state of “trance” the two artists presented during a time of changes. Works on show are mostly recent works by Jin Shan and Zhao Yang and encompass a mix of media including painting, sculpture and installation. Within the non-linear intersections developed by time-space construction and self-expression, the two artists resorted to different (images of) bodies in the attempt to explore for a unique spiritual path of cultural modeling and new possibilities to envisage the uncertain.  

BANK is happy to announce that artist Michael Najjar's work will be showcased in the group show Space Works, which is part of the Backlight 2020, Related Realities photographic art event. Space Works explores and tests our relationship with outer space. It consists of contemporary artworks addressing the themes of hope and opportunity as well as the threats and suspicion that we associate with the infinite universe beyond our home planet.

BANK is happy to announce that artist Tian Zhuo participates in Vitality of Variable, a group show organised by Hao Art Museum(Wenzhou) . 

BANK is thrilled to announce Heidi Voet's solo exhibition "06myflipside" at Project Fulfill Art Space, Taipei. The series of textile works "I was made to be with you" derives its title from a text on a second-hand T-Shirt. Each work consist of multi-layered quilted banners using slogans and imagery collected by the artist found at second-hand T-shirts, handwritten notes, and hacked computer data as source material. The representation of undervalued, domestic labour is combined with the lucrative activity of computer hacking. Personal information which constitutes our sense of privacy and self is conflated with slogans found on T-shirts which establish the wearer's identity in public. Her sculptural ‘vase portrait’ series further questions digital personas by using hacked and leaked personal data to create portraits of victims of identity theft. Instead of using traditional sculptural techniques, an array of seemingly unrelated objects is brought into play to form an image which elusively resembles a human bust; a replica vase, a sports ball cast in concrete, a wig that imitates the hairstyle of the presumed victim.

BANK is very happy to announce that artist Chen Zhe participates in the group show Peer to Peer at Shanghai Center of Photography. Peer to Peer is a group show of 14 artists, selected by 14 curators from across the UK and China. A snapshot of the state of art in UK and China today. Forming the centre of LOOK Photo Biennial 2019. The exhibition has been showed across Open Eye Gallery and the vaulted basement of St.George's Hall in Liverpool. 

In this exhibition, Chen Zhe shows excerpts and backstage works of Towards Evening on different walls. Study of a Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, on the main wall, is a triad of texts, illustrations and photos. It also shows the artist's recent works anxd a research drawing board for her new works Mechanism of Eveningas a companion. 

BANK is extremely proud to announce the upcoming exhibition "OrnAmenTumEtKrimMen" by South African artist and activist Kendell Geers (Johannesburg, 1968) curated by Danilo Eccher, which will open to the public on Monday 21 September 2020. This show brings together some recent creations in tandem with Geers' more iconic past works.

BANK is happy to announce Zheng Haozhong's participation in "Beside the Fields"-Local Art Project which invited 13 local long-term residents, regardless of origin or occupation and age to participate. At the same time, 15 artists who have long lived in the vicinity of Ke Art Museum were invited to participate in this exhibition. Residents will choose which artists they would like to collaborate and discuss with to complete work together. Through this free choice of co-creation methods, we explore the future development direction and possibilities of the Rural Art Museum.

 Chen Zhe | Cover of  "40 YEARS OF CHINESE CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY"

BANK is very happy to announce that artist AUJIK participates in 2019 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. The theme of 2019 UABB is Urban Interactions. It is currently showed at the Main Venues of Futian Railway Station and MOCAUP, from December 22 to March 8,2020. The exhibition consists of two sections, namely, "Eyes of the City" and "Ascend-ing City", which will explore the evolving relationship between urban space and technological innovation from different perspectives. 

Commissioned by the UABB 2019, AUJIK's latest work Spatial Bodies: Shen Zhen & HongKong(2019) is exhibited in MOCAUP "Ascending City". AUJIK applies a conceptual approach to Shenzhen, re-creating the architectural domain to something that resembles electronic components and circuits which are interconnected like a huge computer motherboard. This could be perceived as a reflection of Shenzhen's rapidly technological acceleration and status as one of the most cutting edge metropolis in the world.

BANK is proud to announce that artists Yanyan Huang and Heidi Voet are participating in "Continuous Regeneration", an art exhibition across industries with the theme on sustainable environment on view till February 16, 2020. The exhibition brings together more than 40 artists, designers and creatives from 16 countries, using paintings, installations, videos, multidisciplinary design and other forms of artistic language to address the sustainable development of art and the environment, material life, as well as topics such as energy and futureecology. Presenting these in a poetic form, the exhibition opens a discussionon the status quo of human-nature coexistence and seeks breakthroughs.

Heidi Voet 

"The plastic bag is a vessel for an ever-changing content". Heidi Voet's participating works look like tribal masks, made from weaved plastic bags. While the bag acts as a skin around the contents inside and transport items from one place to the next, masks also disguise the wearer's identity, enabling them to exhibit behaviors outside social conventions. Tribal masks are traditionally used in rites of passage from one state to the another- boyhood to man, life to death- and inevitably refer to Europe's infamous colonial legacy.

Voet repeatedly positions the plastic bag as a shifting actor in her work. The whimsical quality of the plastic bags is seen throughout Heidi Voet's earlier work. Voet imbues common, overlooked objects value and meaning - such as cheap digital watches transformed into acarpet, or Chinese magazines folded into floral arrangements- through the simple act of making and playing.
 

Yanyan Huang

Huang Yanyan’s painting practice, characterized by vital, spinning patterns and uniquely romantic colors, reflects a complex carefree mode of personal expression. Deeply influenced by the tradition of Lyrical Abstraction, and the work of Hans Hartung in the West and Zao Wou-ki in the East, Huang’s gestures and movements come together on her canvases, bringing painter’s options back into contemporary explorations; her spontaneous brush strokes, which at times look like scribbles or calligraphy, are marks that run parallel with time, constantly constructing a rich, and even immortal, personal reality.

Huang’s paintings are very large but not without intimacy. There are no overwhelming narratives related to metaphorical legends; instead, they represent a purer painting phenomenon. They resemble the histories and patterns of collective human visual experience, which subconsciously wait to be extended, deepened, and developed, and the artist’s every brush stroke and color combination is a juncture in this evolution. Even as the works embody history, Huang has a contemporary yet timeless way of removing the eternal division between content and form, and the result is a unifying object without a unified center. Sometimes, a group of forms appear before our eyes, and we can only permit the forms, which are difficult to capture, to appear and disappear. This young artist’s familiarity and integration of Baroque music, modern dance and opera, and the performative and expressive qualities of these art forms are reinforced in her painting. In fact, the existence of painting allows for the possibility of other artistic forms, and vice versa.（Text/Fuca Yuan)

BANK is very honored to announce that our artist Michael Lin's project will be presented at Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Presented by Jumex Contemporary Art Foundation, Michael Lin's Mariposa B1-09 is a hand-painted floor extending in excess of 1300 square meters across the museum’s plaza and through the building's ground floor. The work is based on a traditional table cloth design found in Mexico that echoes similar textiles from the artist's native Taiwan. The painting acts as a physical and metaphorical stage on which the interplay of popular cultural with art and its institutions are displayed.

BANK is thrilled to announce that our artist Yanyan Huang participated in an online group show Labyrinth of Solitude organised by 56henry. This show is an example of creative and mischievous curating that in real life would never happen. The presentation strives to turn fundamental constraints into advantages by bringing together works that ordinarily would be impossible for a young commercial gallery to present. Even though Labyrinth of Solitude is an online exhibition, decisions about the display still had to be made, and it was decided that all works would be "installed" in two gallery spaces replicating the ones at the Met. The exhibition consists of thirteen pairings, each bringing together one historical work and one contemporary painting. Sections includeSolitude and Dreams, Solitude and Nostalgia, Solitude and Nature, Solitude and Vanity, Solitude and Isolation, Solitude and Resurrection, and more. 

Labyrinth of Solitude brings together historical artworks from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and mostly newly commissioned paintings by younger and emerging artists. The idea for this exhibition has several origins. One is the playful idea of what the Met’s masterpieces are doing during this time of lockdown. Without an audience to admire them, are they enjoying a much-needed rest from rudely staring eyes? Or are they suffering from separation anxiety? Do they have conversations among themselves? And if they could speak, how would the masterpieces react to being juxtaposed with works by young and emerging artists? In addition, 56 Henry and the Met could not be more different places to present and view art. One is an intimate, if not tiny, gallery in Lower Manhattan showing untested and cutting-edge art, while the Met is one of the most prestigious museums in the world, home to many treasures of Western civilization. Its vast spaces could house ten thousand 56 Henrys. Yet despite their obvious differences, both typologies are vitally important to New York’s cultural landscape.

One of the great contradictions of life is that we must interact with others, yet no matter how much we consider ourselves social beings, we are essentially always alone. We are the only one who can read our minds; the only one who witnesses our life from birth to death; the only one who truly knows all our flaws, weakness, regrets, and sins. Right now, in a time of mandatory isolation in the face of a not yet fully understood infectious disease, thoughts of seclusion and solitude are inescapable. Labyrinth of Solitude explores these notions against the backdrop of our current realities. It seeks out solitude in works of art and explores how solitude can foster creativity and encourage liberation from the realities of everyday life.

Short-term solitude is a condition artists often seek out voluntarily, to work with focus and concentration. Solitude can also be triggered by a vicious virus or psychological depression. Solitude can facilitate spiritual enlightenment, freedom, and creativity, yet it also evokes reclusion and social apathy. To reflect this, the presented works look at different aspects of solitude via themed pairings of one contemporary and one historical work: Solitude and Idleness, Solitude and Nature, Solitude and Impulse, Solitude and Death, Solitude and Dreams, and others. While most of the artworks in the show are representational, two explore the relation between abstraction and solitude.These works by Lee Krasner and Yanyan Huang propose solitude in pure form.

BANK is happy to announce that artist Chen Zhe’s participation in ‘Participation Mystique’, launching on 6.27 at Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai. The exhibition gathers 14 contemporary artists (groups). The exhibition showcases a series of artistic practice references from psychoanalytic theories, ranging from “collective unconsciousness” to “mimetic desire” with a thread of phantasy, challenging the perception and imagination of desire, and reconnecting the complex spiritual linkage between people and the world. Many of these works presented are exhibited in China for the first time.

In this exhibition, Chen Zhe presents the work 891 Dusks: An Encyclopedia of Psychological Experiences which combines audio, light installation, book and texts. After its debut at Chen’s solo exhibition at BANK in 2017, the work has toured to OCAT Shenzhen, Plug In ICA Winnipeg and other venues. The presentation of the work has gone through many stages of adjustments and expansions based on the artist's observations of the audience at each exhibition.

The work presents the artist’s research on widespread yet undiagnosed symptoms of "evening uneasiness." Tabulated as an index, this book categorizes and conceptualizes the “disquiet” through hundreds of psycho-poetic entries. Adapted from the pseudo-scientific publication, “New Comprehensive Homoeopathic Materia Medica of the Mind", these encyclopedic entries list the “symptoms” from the 891 transient experiences of dusk. Each entry embodies the ephemerality of such experience as well as the ineffable nature of its narrative. In adopting the pseudo-scientific approach to archive literary experience, an unknown lyrical form takes shape, for its semantics become a probe for ambiguity. This encyclopedic presentation is accompanied by a group of text panels documenting the artist's modifications of the original text, and a recording of the selected entries read in English and Chinese along with meditative music.

BANK is happy to announce, artist Lin Ke's participation in Zhejiang Art Museum's academic research project "Nanshan 138: Zhejiang". This is a Contemporary Art Promotion Project for young artists. The project takes new city landmarks and perspectives as its starting point and focuses on the ecology of contemporary art development in Zhejiang as well as the broader diversified society. Young artists in Zhejiang thinks deeply about social reality and cultural innovation in the context of encouraging young artists. Lin Ke's "The Boundary of Dimensions" the second solo exhibition of "Nanshan 138" will officially open on July, 9. The exhibition will feature installations, sound works, computer painting and video. Through varying series of works, the exhibition switches between plane and space in a multi-dimensional way, thus creating a sound paradigm of nature and electronics. The artist's unique light-hearted creative expressions and his immersive, low-fi virtual space are like healing powers that defuse tensions and bring warmth to the audience.

Lin Ke moved from Beijing back down south at the beginning of 2018 to begin anew in this humid land. If Lin Ke's move is traced on an e-map at a scale of 1:1000 meters, he has only moved 120 units. The e-map measures the distance of the artist's travel just as a pointer finger might scribe a journey around one's multi-windowed tablet, with each click representing a hundred kilometres. And just as Lin's repositioning started in 2013, when he left Hangzhou for Beijing, his artworks are also the result of a long elliptic journey of analysis, conversion and re-production. Presented here is a selection of Lin's eclectic productivity over the past 7 years that delineate his physical trajectory in tandem with his creative output.  

As virtual space encroaches steadily upon the dominance of our physical experiences, Lin looks to nature as a conduit to bridge this dichotomy. Upon entering the exhibition, a "tree" sits high upon a peak that can only be reached by synthetic rock-climbing stones. Referencing classical Chinese landscape painting, with its flattening of space and iconic mountain peak where literati might meditate, the tree installation becomes a symbol for both spiritual transcendence and the semiotic conundrum so pertinent to our augmented age. The tree, once a tree, then a photo, then a file, then an icon, then a sculpture is a threshold for the passing of nature into binary code and back again. From God's POV on this perch high on the exhibition wall the artist's inquisitive face peers beyond the tree like a sage in the wilderness looking for the parameters of human consciousness. But if this consciousness, like digital space, is potentially infinite, where might meaning lie? Along its ambiguous edges or within?

Using the architecture of computer systems, software, and the attendant network as his canvas Lin makes ontological inquiries into the malleability of his chosen mediums and their presentations. Lin's endeavor to wrap digital parameters around material substance is similar to language where context often nuances meaning. The computer mouse for Lin "becomes a mole" to "link binary planes to three dimensions". Figurative and direct experiences are often conflated in this schizophrenic dominion. It is a game of cat and mouse where loopholes arise as quickly as they disappear.

In this expanded environment Lin articulates some of the ambiguities and possibilities for a virtual reality that we have already begun to live. In the early work Stargate, 2013 Lin lassoes constellations from desktop images using the rudimentary tools of Photoshop and proceeds to drag them off the confines of the screen as if exiting a stage. Equating the screen with the universe sets the tone for an exhibition in which perspective and ascension is paramount. Just like the first human in space witnessing earth as a beautiful blue sphere, the digital realm has also changed concepts of scalability and dimensions with simple binary code. The digital space not only allows but encourages multiple, synchronous tasks being performed in unison. Hence, the seeming disarray of artworks, some approximating post-notes or tiled and tiered windows, emphasize the artist's crusade to manifest the all-over, multi-dimensional composition of a world we navigate on average, 11 hours per day… and counting.  

As virtual space encroaches steadily upon the dominance of our physical experiences, Lin looks to nature as a conduit to bridge this dichotomy. Upon entering the exhibition, a "tree" sits high upon a peak that can only be reached by synthetic rock-climbing stones. Referencing classical Chinese landscape painting, with its flattening of space and iconic mountain peak where literati might meditate, the tree installation becomes a symbol for both spiritual transcendence and the semiotic conundrum so pertinent to our augmented age. The tree, once a tree, then a photo, then a file, then an icon, then a sculpture is a threshold for the passing of nature into binary code and back again. From God's POV on this perch high on the exhibition wall the artist's inquisitive face peers beyond the tree like a sage in the wilderness looking for the parameters of human consciousness. But if this consciousness, like digital space, is potentially infinite, where might meaning lie? Along its ambiguous edges or within?