Marion Baruch’s long life (*1929 in Timișoara, Romania, lives and works in Gallarate, Italy) reflects the conflicts of the 20th century: fascism, capitalism, communism, feminism, pacifism, migration, social classes, nations, religions, language communities, political ideologies. Through her art, Baruch addresses social themes and observes inner worlds and outer spaces, examines the mechanisms of integration and / or exclusion. Consequently, the artist’s work revolves around the theme of emptiness; she works with omissions, through views and transparency. She speaks of the “void”, meaning not a spiritual nothingness but rather a free space, in the literal sense, to be understood as an invitation to the viewer.

Marion Baruch's most recent works are formally so strong that their minimal aesthetic almost conceals the thematic complexity. Using the remnants of the textile industry as a kind of readymade, the artist addresses the world of labor and questions our resource consumption. Under the title innenausseninnen the Kunstmuseum Lucerne currently presents Marion Baruch’s first retrospective (until June 21, 2020). The exhibition will travel to MAGASIN des horizons, Grenoble (FR), les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac OccitanieToulouse (FR), Muzeul de Artă, Timişoara (RO) and Museo MA*GA, Gallarate (IT).
(photo credit of the artist portrait: Noah Stolz)

Mirko Baselgia observes the dynamics and structures that shape our world in order to redefine them in a personal and intriguing way, indicating the essential interdependence connecting human beings and their activities with the rest of the natural world. Many of his works are directly inspired by a natural structure but which has been reworked in an unexpected medium, giving it new aesthetic value for example …. In all his creations the sensorial experience, and a subtle investigation of materials play a central role and have a tangible impact on one‘s perception of the surrounding space and the world in general. To do this he likes using a variety of mediums (like sculpture, installation, video, painting or drawing,) and exploring their potential thank to the collaboration with craftspeople and other professionals that allows him to take advantage of their specific knowledge and know-how for the materialization of his ideas, even the most demanding and eccentric ones. Philosophical and existential reflections are combined with craftsmanship and scientific knowledge to create poetic and evocative works. The connection between visible and invisible, real and imaginary, and material transformation processes are recurring motifs in his artistic practice.

Michel Comte is a Swiss artist, photographer and environmental advocate. Originally trained as an art restorer, Comte is self-taught and has significantly influenced contemporary photography. In addition to his commercial work, he has collaborated on documentary assignments in war zones in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq and Sudan. His recent work is his evocative and powerful Light series, which explores the impact of environmental changes via sculpture, installation and photography. Comte began investigating climate change and its effects as a university student. About ten years ago the artist decided to wind down most of his activities as a commercial photographer in order to focus artistically on this theme. Comte’s artworks seek to create awareness – with clear statements, highly visible actions, and impressive aesthetics – to the devastating effects of climate change. In 2017, he completed two important solo exhibitions entitled Light and Black Light at Museo MAXXI in Rome and secondly White Light at La Triennale in Milan. Michel Comte recounts: “When my grandfather [the Swiss pioneer aviator] Alfred Comte crossed the Alps in 1914 for the first time, he came back with the most stunning images of shining glaciers. Gigantic white masses covered the mountain ranges. Almost a century later, I climbed many peaks and realized the fast decline of our glaciers and global ice caps.”

Ju Ting's practice can hardly be simplified as abstract painting, although she has clearly excluded representational content from her work. In both of her on-going series, Untitled and Pearl, the artist applies numerous layers of acrylic paint on top of each other onto a wooden panel, until obtaining a certain thickness. She then manipulates and models the stacked layers of color by hand or using tools. In the end the cut, folded, peeled or torn layers of color present a certain plasticity, as if form is organically generated from within the image. The works on view are recent pieces from both above-mentioned series.

Tobias Kaspar's practice is not a sceptical, detached position, but rather one that draws on unlimited resources inside the structures and stories of art. Kaspar is fascinated with mechanisms that shape the processes of value creation and taste formation. He is interested in how and when symbolic added value and desire are created. His works demonstrate an interest in cultural transfer processes of styles and fashions within a sphere or beyond it, tracing global trajectories. The mechanisms of fashion, its dazzling power of seduction, of creating a desire to be someone else, and the possibilities it offers to embody or simulate identities are one of the key frames of reference for his practice. It often operates similar to fashion whose logic ranges between the market and an elusive irrationality. In recent years, Tobias Kaspar has become known not only for researching the trade routes of the aesthetic economy but also for establishing his own merchandise—a magazine, a line of jeans, and now, the plush toy. Here, he also deploys architectural typologies that seem to riff off the aesthetics of institutional critique in their revelation of labor conditions in the art industry.
(photo credit of the artist portrait: Nik Ash)

With the white landscapes Qiu Shihua questions the concept of visibility in painting. The artist has his motifs appear and disappear, as they lie captured in and under thin, white layers of paint and translucent glazes. The way Qiu repeatedly revisits the “white landscape” as a picture type and his tireless occupation with the nuances of its changeability are signs of Taoist thinking and a Taoist approach to work. This outlook is characterized by the process of repetition, whereby presence and absence, the full and the void, depiction and withdrawal are brought into constant interplay with each other. The depiction of a landscape forms one pole in this process, while the simultaneous effacement of the same forms the other. Seeing becomes an interplay of perception. In this, associations can be drawn with the shan shui (or ‘mountain-water’) tradition of Chinese painting, which required similar modes of seeing in a shifting process between the opposite poles of emptiness and fullness of the depicted subject.
Galerie Urs Meile will hold solo exhibitions of Qiu's work in both locations throught the current year.

Anatoly Shuravlev’s artistic approach remains conceptual over the years and throughout all work cycles. Paint, plexiglass (be it spheres, cubes, or unshapely objects), space, walls and sometimes metal—they all serve him as a medium to the medial object of photography. In this context it is characteristic of the artist to work in series. At the center remains the irritation of our perception.

Rebekka Steiger had her first solo exhibition 猫头鹰–virages nocturnes at Galerie Urs Meile Beijing in 2018. The young artist presented recent paintings and works on paper created during her residency at Galerie Urs Meile Beijing. While she continued working in her distinctive style, her extensive stay in a foreign country allowed her more freedom of mind and openness to surprises and chance encounters. Through a layer-by-layer color rendering, Rebekka Steiger transforms her perception of emotions and atmospheres into mysterious and delicate art pieces, achieving unexpected visual results. The tension between abstraction and representation, the expressive rendering of bright colors as well as the use of non-narrative figurative motifs are key aspects of her work that make the painting not only intriguing, but also unsettling. The Kunsthaus Grenchen in Switzerland will present the solo exhibition boxing the compass (March 22 - May 24, 2020).

Julia Steiner’s works speak directly to the viewers’ sensations and do not provide them with any concrete or recognizable figurative subjects. Established references and codes are only suggested to the inner logic of intuition. The artist does not want to comment or illustrate, but rather create an experience. Thus, one has to navigate these images without the familiar coordinate system, being continually forced to redefine one’s own position. This fragile equilibrium is omnipresent in Julia Steiner’s art. She creates a very intense relationship between the image and the viewers, who find themselves accomplices in overcoming the uncertainty inherent to the drawings. The artworks can be explored through the body’s perception of space. Due to their sheer size alone Steiner’s works on paper directly address physical feelings, making us aware of them and linking them to sight and movement. In addition, her installations examine the theme of sensing space, adding the dimension of time to a relationship of space to our bodies and lives. The mpk Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern (Germany) currently presents Julia Steiners’ solo exhibition Am Saum des Raumes (until July 19, 2020).
 (photo credit of the artist portrait: Lorenz Raich)

Xie Nanxing is a revolutionary and experimental painter, who always challenges tradition and the seemingly established rules of art education. He is interested in psychology and also approaches his practice with a psychologist’s line of questioning, inquiring into what is behind the surface. For this year's Art Basel Hong Kong we will present a work in his “canvas print” technique that he has been exploring during recent years. On top of a primed canvas—in this case ochre-browm, black and white—he put another canvas, upon which he painted a figurative painting. But the finished and exhibited work is the canvas beneath, which only shows the traces of paint that penetrated through onto the base coat. Both the primed lower canvas and the figurative upper canvas had no relation with each other before.
Galerie Urs Meile Beijing will hold a solo exhibtion with the artist's latest series of works in November this year.

Yang Mushi submits himself to a rigorous daily routine. He diligently works on his sculptural materials in vigorous acts of sharpening, sawing and grinding, finally covering them with black lacquer, thus reducing them to dark shapes of violent aesthetics and a martial kind of beauty. Yang’s consistent artistic approach, starting by choosing industrial raw materials and only black colour reaches as far as the naming of his works, mainly only giving a technical description of what he did to the materials. In conjunction with Yang's "dark productions", his recent Illumimating series appropriates neon lights as the subject of his labor. Light is visible, yet intangible. It emits thermal energy while conveying a burning pain, almost as the same manner as his "Dark" series. In the world of dark and light, these two series complement and inform one another, not only in term of shapes, but also their ideological footing.

The methodology behind Zhang Xuerui’s abstract paintings appears quickly at first glance, namely the use of an orderly grid, of which each unit is filled with gradually shifting colors. Beyond these apparent simple elements – colors and grids – lies the artist’s inner understanding of the notion of space. Time also plays a crucial role in the construction of Zhang Xuerui’s paintings, as the subtle gradients she generates must be completed at once in very intense moments of concentration. Although the formulas of Zhang Xuerui’s paintings are clear, her works can hardly be aligned to Western abstract painting, color field painting, or monochrome painting, all of which are confined only to the composition of colors, to let colors manifest themselves. The color, to Zhang Xuerui, is a key to the manifestation of “space” on canvas. Her pursuit for the color is on a metaphorical level, for the purpose of revealing “space” vividly on canvas. The artist held her first solo exhibition The Everyday as Ontology at Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne in June 2019. She will hold her second solo exhibition in the gallery’s Beijing branch in the end of summer, 2020.