New Representation
Jia Aili
Gagosian is pleased to announce the global representation of Jia Aili, one of China’s foremost contemporary artists. Born in the late 1970s, Jia has developed a practice that reflects on arts and philosophy from both East and West. While the content of his epic figurative paintings is unmistakably of his own time and cultural context, his formal virtuosity and complex layering of narrative reveal a deep and astute working knowledge of the inventions and traditions of painting from the Renaissance to the present day.
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Jia Aili, Geometry in the Sky, 2017. Photo: courtesy Jia Aili Studio
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Artist Spotlight
Jia Aili
May 26–June 1, 2021
A pioneering member of a new generation of Chinese artists, Jia Aili creates dynamic paintings that at once emerge from and challenge art historical conventions in the context of a rapidly changing world. In his wide-ranging practice, which incorporates abstraction, portraiture, fantastic imagery, and scenes from daily life, he reflects on the dramatic modernization of society while probing the vulnerabilities of the existential human condition. For Jia, new meaning emerges out of both this interweaving of disparate narratives and the reconsideration of complex knowledge systems.
Photo: Liiibing
Video
Jia Aili
Our Century, Part 1
Filmed by Jia Aili’s friend Wen Cheng, this two-part video documents the artist creating We Are from the Century (2008–11), his largest painting to date, measuring more than 19 feet high and 49 feet wide. Part 1 includes archival video footage and offers insight into Jia’s process through a look at reference images and views of the work in progress.
Still from “Jia Aili: Our Century, Part 1”
Video
Jia Aili
Our Century, Part 2
This video—the second segment of a two-part video documenting the production of Jia Aili’s epic painting We Are from the Century (2008–11)—includes detailed time-lapse footage showing the creation of one of the component panels, a conversation about airplanes with one of the artist’s friends, and source imagery that inspired the work.
Still from “Jia Aili: Our Century, Part 2”
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2024
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Lauren Halsey: Full and Complete Freedom
Essence Harden, curator at Los Angeles’s California African American Museum and cocurator of next year’s Made in LA exhibition at the Hammer Museum, visited Lauren Halsey in her LA studio as the artist prepared for an exhibition in Paris and the premiere of her installation at the 60th Biennale di Venezia this summer.
Candy Darling
Published in March, Cynthia Carr’s latest biography recounts the life and work of the Warhol superstar and transgender trailblazer Candy Darling. Combining scholarship, compassion, and a rich understanding of the world Darling inhabited, Carr’s follow-up to her biography of the artist David Wojnarowicz elucidates the incredible struggles that Darling faced in the course of her determined journey toward a more glamorous, more honest, and more tender world. Here, Carr tells Josh Zajdman about the origins of the book, her process, and what she hopes readers glean from the story.