Natee Utarit Richard Koh Fine Art 

Natee Utarit, Cetasika, 2018, Richard Koh Fine Art

Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) announced its participation in Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 with the solo presentation of Thai artist: Natee Utarit. The artist presented recent works, comprising of 7 oil paintings on canvas. With the exhibition “Your past is my future”, Natee Utarit continues his investigation of the relationship between European colonialism  and Southeast Asian culture. If in the previous pictorial cycles, Utarit focused his attention on the dynamics through which the West has exerted its influence both on the style and on the art of Southeast Asia, with these new paintings he looks  at the common aspects of different cultures. At the base of the new cycle of works, there is the awareness that it is possible  to give new life to one’s own culture starting from the aspects shared with different cultures with a glorious past.  The unreleased series of paintings “Your past is my future” addresses the relationship among individuals in a less pessimistic way  than the previous cycles: “We tend to be wary of our neighbours,” writes Utarit at this regard, “because the version of the story  we learned has taught us to see people from other cultures as enemies or rivals. We think that our culture was created exclusively  by our ancestors. We have never had the courage to accept that our customs and traditions may have been influenced or shaped by other  cultural forces.”

Michaël Borremans David Zwirner

Michaël Borremans, The Cheese Sandwich, 2019, David Zwirner

Michaël Borremans‘s innovative approach to painting combines technical mastery with subject matter that defies straightforward interpretation. His charged canvases address universal themes that seem to resonate with a specifically contemporary relevance. The artist was born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium and in 1996 he received his M.F.A. from Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst Campus St. Lucas, in Ghent. David Zwirner has represented his works since 2001. Previous solo exhibitions at the gallery include Fire from the Sun (Hong Kong, 2018), Black Mould (London, 2015), The Devil’s Dress (New York, 2011), Taking Turns (New York, 2009),  Horse Hunting (New York, 2006), and Trickland (New York, 2003).

Borremans’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a number of prominent institutions. Most recently, Michaël Borremans: Fixture, was presented at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in 2015-2016. A major museum survey, Michaël Borremans: As sweet as it gets, which included one hundred works from the past two decades, was on view at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 2014. The exhibition traveled later in the year to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, followed by the Dallas Museum of Art in 2015. Michaël Borremans:  The Advantage, the artist’s first museum solo show in Japan, was also on view in 2014 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. In 2011, Michaël Borremans: Eating the Beard, a comprehensive solo show was presented at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, and traveled to the Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest and the Kunsthalle Helsinki. In 2010, he had a solo exhibition at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, as well as commissioned work on view at the Royal Palace in Brussels. Other venues which have hosted solo exhibitions include the kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2009); de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2007); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent (2005), which traveled to Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London, and the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (2005); Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany (2004); and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2004).

Work by the artist is held in public collections internationally, including Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Borremans lives and works in Ghent.

Abdul Abdullah Yavuz Gallery

Abdul Abdullah, Dogs in the manger, 2019, Yavuz Gallery

Abdul Abdullah’s (b. 1986, Australia) dynamic practice addresses the contemporary experience of being an ‘other’ in society. He has engaged with various marginalised minority communities and is particularly interested in the misconceptions and misunderstandings of young Muslims in multicultural Australia. Though political in context, his works do not attempt to address any specifics of religion or comment on particular individuals who practice it, but instead examines the complex feelings of displacement and alienation associated with histories of diaspora and migration. Notions of cultural hybridity, ceremony, ritual, and intimate aspects of the self and identity are revealed in his work through his darkly distinctive oeuvre that is confronting and deeply elucidating in regard to the human condition.

Abdul is collected by the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, amongst others. He is also a four-time Archibald Prize finalist and three-time Sulman Prize finalist, the most prestigious art prizes in Australia, a rarity for an artist of his years.

Jonathan Meese Galerie Krinzinger

Jonathan Meese, MAIDMEESE IV (KOSMETISIEREND), 2011, Galerie Krinzinger