Ma Ke’s Solo Exhibition: Contemporary Chinese Painting

About the exhibition

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art together with the Moscow Centre for Contemporary Art No.9 present a solo exhibition of the famous Chinese painter Ma Ke. Embracing the rich national traditions of his country, as well as the spectrum of innovative trends in Western art the artist creates unexpected and vivid content.

The project opens on the wave of mutual interest of Russia and China. When studying the cultural and artistic development in the late 20th and early 21st centuries of the two countries, one can find some similarities in the artists’ creative endeavours: an appeal to their identity in their subjects, and at the same time, a close attention to the European and American authors’ quest for composition and technique. The exhibition offers the sophisticated viewer an opportunity to grasp this parallel. The halls present an early series of paintings by Ma Ke dedicated to the appropriation of Pablo Picasso’s images, significantly transformed by the artist’s expression. Ultimately, this becomes the starting point for the development of his own style. In addition, the exhibition shows one of Ma Ke’s favourite techniques – transformation of human figures, animals and even inanimate objects. This is sure to draw comparisons with other masters, representatives of various trends of world modernism.

Ma Ke, despite his innovative approach to painting and composition, is an alumnus of one of the most influential art institutions in China, the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. After his studies, the artist joined the Academy’s teaching staff in the Department of Oil Painting, where the main task is to preserve and pass on to students the traditions and principles of classical art. As a respected master in academic circles and a painter of the new generation of Chinese artists, Ma Ke has become one of the leading painters of contemporary China.

The exhibition will cover a wide range of Ma Ke’s oeuvre – more than 100 works by the artist, from sketches created in the 1990s to recent paintings. The viewers will see that the scale of the artist’s works varies from small, chamber drawings to large-scale canvases.

About the artist

Ma Ke was born in 1970 in Zibo, Shandong Province, China. He graduated from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1994 and taught in the oil painting department there from 1994 to 2002. In 2005 he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has had more than 10 solo shows and participated in more than 20 group exhibitions around the world. Ma Ke’s works are in private and museum collections in various countries, including the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland; The Hammer Museum in Chicago, USA; M+ Museum in Hong Kong, China; White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney, Australia and others. The artist lives and works in Beijing.