At the age of just 18, Zhao Gang, the son of Manchurian intellectuals, was the youngest member of the legendary Star Group, alongside Ai Weiwei as well as Huang Rui. In 1979, the way the up-and-coming avant-garde group in China protested against the party’s control of art was as influential as it was unsuccessful. Later, he studied in Europe and in the United States, acquired American citizenship, and is regarded as one of the outstanding “representatives of his generation, who truly understands East as well as West and speaks Chinese and English as a native language” (Phil Tinara) and who, as a passionate painter, consequently, also blends the visual language of East and West into a hybrid in a subtle, rebellious, sensitive, frenetic, mischievous, and absurd manner. In 2018 he took part in the survey exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” at the Guggenheim Museum, which showed the crème de la crème of contemporary art. The publication provides an overview of six central exhibitions from recent years, and takes a retrospective look at his work and life.

The Waldfrieden Sculpture Park is honouring the great painter and sculptor Heinz Mack on his 90th birthday with an exhibition devoted exclusively to his sculptural work. In its three exhibition halls and in the open grounds, the sculpture park presents 50 sculptures by Heinz Mack, including numerous works that have never been shown publicly before. Accompanying the exhibition is this comprehensive catalogue in German and English with numerous illustrations from the exhibition, a foreword by Anthony Cragg, a preface by Dr. Thomas A. Lange, two statements by Heinz Mack and essays by Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Norman Rosenthal, Corinna Thierolf and Jon Wood. The essays - analogous to the illustration section, which shows photographs from all three exhibition pavilions and from the outdoor area - are devoted to the artist's wealth of forms and diversity of materials on the basis of the exhibited stone works, steles made of wood and metal, metal reliefs and screens.

Born in 1980 in Harbin, China, Song Yige grew up in this northeastern industrial city in the province of Heilongjiang. Quickly devoted to art as a child, she was known to forgo treats in order to buy water colours, brushes and drawing paper. Song graduated in 2007 from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, before moving to Beijing where she currently lives and works. During her formative years she gained the patronage of artist Zeng Fanzhi. His mentorship and their creative collaboration continues and has resulted in her emergence onto the international art scene.

This first ever monograph showcases Song Yige’s first decade of painting and features her oil on canvas works. The artist’s characteristically emotional metaphors and depictions of the modern world involve everyday objects, anonymous characters, animals, and imaginary settings to create her atmospheric effects. Through fascinating large-scale and often melancholic works, Song Yige merges her childhood memories with autobiographical details to reinterpret contemporary life within the confinements of busy cityscapes. Thin layers of paint with dramatic contrasts result in a captivating glow which has already beome her signiature style. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions and galleries across Asia and a recent debut show curated by Zeng Fanzhi at the Marlborough Fine Art Gallery in London, which was her first exhibition outside of Asia.