Exhibition         

19th August 2023 – 8th October 2023

Venue              

 SGA Three on the Bund, 3F, No.3 Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, Shanghai

Artists          

Gao Jialu

Curator

Wang Yu

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Space & Gallery Association is pleased to present the inaugural solo exhibition of Gao Jialu: Easter, at our Shanghai gallery. The exhibit is on view from the 19th August 2023 through till the 8th October 2023. As a traditional Western festival, Easter has always come the first Sunday after the Paschal moon, and thus has a secular meaning of rebirth and revival in seasonal festivals. The artist's works are centered around the connotations of Easter, conveying her humanism as an individual through her concerns for universal propositions such as "hope" and "rebirth". The exhibition will feature the artist's series "Figures" and "Eggs", of which the series "Figures" will feature the artist's eponymous work based on Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper.

Please join us at the opening reception this Saturday, 19th August 2023, from 4 to 6 pm.

Gao Jialu has practiced Chinese calligraphy since a very young age and has created a system of symbols with independent meanings through her imaginations and spontaneous writings. After receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, she pursued her MA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Using oilpaint as her primary medium, she has been seeking a correlation between shape and symbols and has been expressing her iconographies on the canvas.

Gao Jialu’sworks are based on the study of abstract language. She has been exploring the pictorial significance of independent, systematic character symbols in contemporary art. With intuitive brush strokes, she seeks the connection between colours and images from the meaning and structure of lines and symbols. The contrast and movement of colors and lines form geometric images which composes a narrative. Meanwhile, the simplicity of technique and arrangement abstracts the burden of history that is placed on the colours and lines, allowing her paintings to achieve an abstract and pure visual effect.

Although she practices Chinese calligraphy very frequently, Gao is more interested in thinking about the world beyond Chinese characters. In the full-bodied structure and the tension of modernist colours, the symbols self-originated by the artist pass freely through her works, and the spiritual and imaginative images show the artist's romantic and poetic expression. The abstracted faces of the figures show the artist's concern for humanism. The unreadable symbols are like notes jumping around, bringing musicality to the flat canvas.

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About the artists

Gao Jialu（1996, Shanghai, China)

Gao Jialu attained a bachelor’s degree in Arts from School of Visual Arts New York in 2016. In 2020, she graduated from Rhode Island School of Design Providence of Arts with a master’s degree. Gao currently resides and works in New York and Shanghai.Her works have been collected by the LONG MUSEUM, Yunjian Art Museum and other institutions.

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Gallery

Click here to download our exhibition catalogue.