Anthem, 2025
Glazed stoneware, faux suede dyed with indigo leaf
150 x 57 x 47 cm, 59.06 x 22.44 x 18.5 in.

A certain nostalgia plays a part in the story. Anthem is a telling title. If you look it in the eye, you might think the black tears were meant for us and the tragedy of our time. The figure is a hybrid messenger - simultaneously from the past and the future - whose tears hold up a mirror to us. Anthem, who sings a hymn to what once was. Perhaps it is itself the bearer of nostalgia for what once was, and regret where humanity is heading.

About the artist: Tucker’s shape- and genre-shifting sculptures and reliefs explore the intersection of ceramic tradition, cultural symbolism and the emotional intensity of contemporary cultural anxiety. Drawing from diverse sources like fossils, armour, and ritual artifacts, her anachronistic works use repetition and transformation to evoke a sense of enchantment and ambiguity. Themes of femininity, fetish culture, and the surreal challenge conventional interpretations, creating a powerful and immersive visual language.

Her work has been featured in The Quarry, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2025 (solo show), Umbra, Steve Turner, Los Angeles, USA in 2024 (solo show), Buried, OHSH Projects, London, UK (group show) in 2024, Ares, The Pavilion, Cromwell Place, London, UK in 2023 (group show) and Arca, Five Years Archway, London, UK in 2023 (solo show).

She was recently awarded with the Creative Scotland Individual Fund in 2025, was part of the Sanctuary Slimane residency in Marrakesh, MA, the GIRLPOWER residency in Aquitaine, FR in 2023 and gained the Hope Scott Trust, a visual artist Grant in 2022, as well as the VACMA bursary, from the city of Glasgow, UK.

For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (1), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
176 x 74 x 5 cm, 69.29 x 29.13 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (2), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
183 x 102 x 5 cm, 72.05 x 40.16 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (3), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
175 x 70 x 5 cm, 68.90 x 27.56 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (4), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
167 x 48 x 5 cm, 65.75 x 18.90 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (5), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
162 x 70 x 5 cm, 64 x 27.56 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Isolated Figure (6), 2020
Colour Print on 5mm PVC Foamex, Rotating Motor, Thread
162 x 70 x 5 cm, 64 x 27.56 x 1.97 in.
Edition of 3 + 1AP

Isolated Figures: The joke almost sticks in the throat. The figures spin slowly and relentlessly around themselves on the spot. Something about them isn’t genuine. An intangible unease and mistrust towards their veracity. And yet we will hardly be able to resist laughing a little at them and the situation. At our own fright and at the figures' eel-like sleekness. Because they are both mirrors and projections. They come from the internet, as Wallinger says, from anonymous stock photographic agency figures. Generic, so-called stock images of people made alive and exposed by Wallinger. Spinning in one place, they suggest something of our own loop in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot escape. Who can argue that it is not an ingenious allegory of our collectively but solitarily experienced emotional world during and since the pandemic?

About the artist: Mark Wallinger is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’. His work ‘Ecce Homo’ (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. ‘Labyrinth’ (2013), a major and permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work ‘Writ in Water’ was realised for the National Trust to celebrate Magna Carta at Runnymede, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was unveiled in 2019 for the London School of Economics.

A surprising, inventive and profound artist, whose multi-faceted work encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film and video, performance and work for the public realm. Stylistic disparity conceals a conceptual coherence, as Wallinger poses big questions about identity, and about the social, cultural and political power structures that guide us, and because of which we are as we are.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

_hey wan_ _o break free, 2025
Plastic, lace, glitters, LEDs
107 x 35 x 35 cm, 42.13 x 13.78 x 13.78 in.

About the work (see also: https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/de/akademie/10126-reading-ramistrasse-177-anja-segmuller-on-vincent-grange-at-galerie-fabian-lang and https://fabianlang.ch/s/Vincent-Grange_Kunstbulletin_January-2026_Barbara-Ruf.pdf):

In June 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn - one of the few refuges for New York’s queer community. What was meant to be a routine act of intimidation instead ignited two nights of resistance led by trans women, drag queens, and gay men who refused to disappear. Days later, the New York Daily News mocked the uprising with the headline “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.” Reporter Jerry Lisker caricatured the rioters as “Madwomen of Chaillot,” hysterical and absurd — insults meant to shame them, yet unwittingly capturing the spark and fury of a movement being born.

The exhibition in which this work was shown imagined a girl group reclaimed from those very slurs: The Madwomen of Chaillot — three fictional figures named Molly, Lilly, and Dorothy. Dorothy, first introduced in Grange’s The House of Dorothy (2025), returns here with two new bandmates. Together, they extend the artist’s ongoing exploration of queer history and the lived reality of queerness today. Through this evolving narrative, Grange traces a continuum of queer resistance — from the rebellion at Stonewall to the renewed threats against LGBTQIA+ rights around the world.

The Madwomen’s presence unfolds across three sculptural works — a left-to-right storyline of defiance:

· A shopping trolley filled with lace Molotov cocktails, a tribute to Stonewall and those who fought back.

· A heeled dustpan sweeping up broken glass, the shimmering debris of rebellion

· A vacuum cleaner with a bag full of glitter appears to have just collected the remnants of a party that took place last night at Dorothy’s house. This eccentric sculpture evokes the vacuum cleaner used by Freddie Mercury in drag in the Queen’s I Want to Break Free video, which became an icon of subverting expectations around gender identity. A playful monument to challenging gender stereotypes and rebelling against domestic labour, the vacuum cleaner, upon closer inspection, also suggests a darker reference. The colours of the glitter match the trans flag, and the cleaning it has undergone might allude to an attempt to erase the rights of the community. Glitter, a material often considered frivolous and linked to celebration and fun, transforms into a symbol of resistance and a reminder to stick together in the face of threats of our time.

These works appear as if extracted from long-lost music videos by this girl group of the late 60s and 70s — a way of “re-exposing” their legacy to show how urgently their message still resonates. They stand as a refusal to accept the rollback of our rights under far-right governments.

Finally, the artwork titles appear without the letter T — a direct response to the Trump administration’s removal of “T” from the LGBT acronym on U.S. governmental websites, an complete erasure of the trans community. By intentionally omitting the letter, the exhibition amplifies the absurdity and violence of that act — and refuses its intended erasure.

About the artist: Drawing on LGBTQIA+ histories, queer identities, and speculative storytelling, Vincent Grange builds worlds populated by fictional characters and symbolic artefacts that question societal norms and power structures. The architecture, artefacts and different sculptures he creates, invite visitors to interpret each decision he takes, and decipher the often absurd and camp story he is writing. Across his exhibitions, Grange writes a continuous, evolving story - each show developing from the previous one. Charactors reappear, objects resurface, and spaces interconnect, forming a growing universe that unfolds across time and place.

After gaining his Master’s in Space and Communication at HEAD – Genève (Haute École d’Art et Design), Grange co-founded and is part of Collectif Kimera, in charge of Espace Dukat, a new contemporary art space based in Geneva. Additionally, he co-founded Souplex Atelier with his colleague and friend Tanguy Troubat, where he works as a scenographer and art director for institutions like Istituto Svizzero, HEAD Genève, and emerging artists.

His work has been featured in The Madwomen of Chaillot, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2025 (solo show), Eyes Open, I Breath Again, Alice Amati Gallery, London, UK in 2025 (group show), The House of Dorothy, Istituto Svizzero, Milan, IT in 2025 (solo show) and Dorothy's House, Printemps Carougeois, Geneva, CH in 2024 (solo show).

In 2023, he received the Déliée Grant from the Fonds Cantonal d’Art Contemporain, and in 2024, he was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Prize at the Swiss Art Awards.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

Pu__ing our spiked heel down, 2025
Steel, plastic, wood
126 x 19 x 20 cm, 49.61 x 7.48 x 7.87 in. (dustpan)
126 x 16 x 6 cm , 49.61 x 6.3 x 2.36 in. (broom)

About the work (see also:https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/de/akademie/10126-reading-ramistrasse-177-anja-segmuller-on-vincent-grange-at-galerie-fabian-lang and https://fabianlang.ch/s/Vincent-Grange_Kunstbulletin_January-2026_Barbara-Ruf.pdf):

In June 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn - one of the few refuges for New York’s queer community. What was meant to be a routine act of intimidation instead ignited two nights of resistance led by trans women, drag queens, and gay men who refused to disappear. Days later, the New York Daily News mocked the uprising with the headline “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.” Reporter Jerry Lisker caricatured the rioters as “Madwomen of Chaillot,” hysterical and absurd — insults meant to shame them, yet unwittingly capturing the spark and fury of a movement being born.

The exhibition in which this work was shown imagined a girl group reclaimed from those very slurs: The Madwomen of Chaillot — three fictional figures named Molly, Lilly, and Dorothy. Dorothy, first introduced in Grange’s The House of Dorothy (2025), returns here with two new bandmates. Together, they extend the artist’s ongoing exploration of queer history and the lived reality of queerness today. Through this evolving narrative, Grange traces a continuum of queer resistance — from the rebellion at Stonewall to the renewed threats against LGBTQIA+ rights around the world.

The Madwomen’s presence unfolds across three sculptural works — a left-to-right storyline of defiance:

· A shopping trolley filled with lace Molotov cocktails, a tribute to Stonewall and those who fought back.

· A heeled dustpan sweeping up broken glass, the shimmering debris of rebellion

· A vacuum cleaner with a bag full of glitter appears to have just collected the remnants of a party that took place last night at Dorothy’s house. This eccentric sculpture evokes the vacuum cleaner used by Freddie Mercury in drag in the Queen’s I Want to Break Free video, which became an icon of subverting expectations around gender identity. A playful monument to challenging gender stereotypes and rebelling against domestic labour, the vacuum cleaner, upon closer inspection, also suggests a darker reference. The colours of the glitter match the trans flag, and the cleaning it has undergone might allude to an attempt to erase the rights of the community. Glitter, a material often considered frivolous and linked to celebration and fun, transforms into a symbol of resistance and a reminder to stick together in the face of threats of our time.

These works appear as if extracted from long-lost music videos by this girl group of the late 60s and 70s — a way of “re-exposing” their legacy to show how urgently their message still resonates. They stand as a refusal to accept the rollback of our rights under far-right governments.

Finally, the artwork titles appear without the letter T — a direct response to the Trump administration’s removal of “T” from the LGBT acronym on U.S. governmental websites, an complete erasure of the trans community. By intentionally omitting the letter, the exhibition amplifies the absurdity and violence of that act — and refuses its intended erasure.

About the artist: Drawing on LGBTQIA+ histories, queer identities, and speculative storytelling, Vincent Grange builds worlds populated by fictional characters and symbolic artefacts that question societal norms and power structures. The architecture, artefacts and different sculptures he creates, invite visitors to interpret each decision he takes, and decipher the often absurd and camp story he is writing. Across his exhibitions, Grange writes a continuous, evolving story - each show developing from the previous one. Charactors reappear, objects resurface, and spaces interconnect, forming a growing universe that unfolds across time and place.

After gaining his Master’s in Space and Communication at HEAD – Genève (Haute École d’Art et Design), Grange co-founded and is part of Collectif Kimera, in charge of Espace Dukat, a new contemporary art space based in Geneva. Additionally, he co-founded Souplex Atelier with his colleague and friend Tanguy Troubat, where he works as a scenographer and art director for institutions like Istituto Svizzero, HEAD Genève, and emerging artists.

His work has been featured in The Madwomen of Chaillot, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2025 (solo show), Eyes Open, I Breath Again, Alice Amati Gallery, London, UK in 2025 (group show), The House of Dorothy, Istituto Svizzero, Milan, IT in 2025 (solo show) and Dorothy's House, Printemps Carougeois, Geneva, CH in 2024 (solo show).

In 2023, he received the Déliée Grant from the Fonds Cantonal d’Art Contemporain, and in 2024, he was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Prize at the Swiss Art Awards.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

The House of Dorothy - Dorothy’s Office, 2023-2026
Various media all handcrafted
230 x 265 x 275 cm, 90.55 x 104.33 x 108.27 in.

Dorothy’s Office is a room extracted from The House of Dorothy (2023-today), an ongoing immersive installation imagining the secret home of Dorothy—a fictional queer figure inspired by the coded expression “Friends of Dorothy,” historically used within LGBTQIA+ communities as a discreet way to recognize one another. Conceived as part domestic interior, part refuge, the project explores themes of secrecy, surveillance, chosen family, and queer survival through a series of interconnected rooms filled with symbolic objects and hidden narratives. In this isolated chapter presented at Basel Social Club, Dorothy’s Office takes the form of a surreal surveillance room where mirrors, cameras, and hybrid domestic objects reflect the tension between visibility and concealment that has long shaped queer existence.

About the artist: Drawing on LGBTQIA+ histories, queer identities, and speculative storytelling, Vincent Grange builds worlds populated by fictional characters and symbolic artefacts that question societal norms and power structures. The architecture, artefacts and different sculptures he creates, invite visitors to interpret each decision he takes, and decipher the often absurd and camp story he is writing. Across his exhibitions, Grange writes a continuous, evolving story - each show developing from the previous one. Charactors reappear, objects resurface, and spaces interconnect, forming a growing universe that unfolds across time and place.

After gaining his Master’s in Space and Communication at HEAD – Genève (Haute École d’Art et Design), Grange co-founded and is part of Collectif Kimera, in charge of Espace Dukat, a new contemporary art space based in Geneva. Additionally, he co-founded Souplex Atelier with his colleague and friend Tanguy Troubat, where he works as a scenographer and art director for institutions like Istituto Svizzero, HEAD Genève, and emerging artists.

His work has been featured in The Madwomen of Chaillot, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2025 (solo show), Eyes Open, I Breath Again, Alice Amati Gallery, London, UK in 2025 (group show), The House of Dorothy, Istituto Svizzero, Milan, IT in 2025 (solo show) and Dorothy's House, Printemps Carougeois, Geneva, CH in 2024 (solo show).

In 2023, he received the Déliée Grant from the Fonds Cantonal d’Art Contemporain, and in 2024, he was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Prize at the Swiss Art Awards.

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.

The Martyrs of Beauty, 2024-2025
Egg tempera on linen in five (5) parts
Each panel: 146 x 46 cm (framed)
Total: 146 x 230 cm (framed)

The five panel painting Martyrs of Beauty provides a rare, early insight into the artist's current exploration of the theme of plastic surgery. Martyrs are people who suffer and endure death for the sake of professing their faith. Whether the five in this picture go that far is a mystery. But their obsession with physical improvement does come close to being a religion. Some call it that, others perhaps self-mutilation. Martyr can also be linked here with the word martyrdom, because that is what each of those depicted here suffers in order to realise their aspired ideal of the new self. However, the artist does not judge and does not want to do so, and when asked about this, he replied that he sees something more heroic in the drive and courage of these figures than anything else.

About the artist: Xiao Guo Hui grew up in an old house with the rural atmosphere of a village, at the heart of an ancient Chinese city. The cheerful Guangzhou of Xiao’s memory has been completely replaced with a monolithic, monstrous carapace, the largest urban zone that the world has ever seen. In alienation, he found himself on the royal road to the experiences that have been the heritage of the West for several centuries; after an initial stay in Canada, he moved to Paris, which provided him with an index of vivid images which populate his imagination.

In Xiao's works, a simultaneous, existentially absurd hustle and bustle is viewed from above. He draws on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of painting to create his own distinctive visual world. Only indirectly do his paintings recall Chinese life; more often, they seem to be memories from years walking in European cities. Not only the experiences of today but the entire heritage of modernity, is visible in his paintings. They effortlessly blend the early Renaissance, Mannerism, Ukiyo-e painting and perhaps a little Francis Bacon. Throughout, he demonstrates infinite patience and attention to detail. Despite all the painterly seriousness, his works always have something playful about them. As he said himself, his greatest love is egg tempera. This seductively old technique brings luminosity and radiance to his reduced colour palette, giving his paintings a special temperament.

His work has been featured in Le Théâtre du Paradis, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2023 (solo show), Amour-Propre, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2024 (group show), Don’t Fuck With Our Human, Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich, CH in 2022 (group show) and Feast, Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto, CA in 2015 (solo show).

Represented by Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich. For further inquiries please write to Fabian Lang at info@fabianlang.ch.