Date: April 30, 2025 - July 20, 2025

Venue: Gallery 14, 4F, Guangdong Museum of Art (BAIETAN)

Organizer: Guangdong Museum of Art

Supporters: The Embassy of France in Beijing. The Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in Beijing. The Consulate General of France in Guangzhou

 

Exhibition Director: Wang Shaoqiang

Academic Supports: Ji Shaofeng, Su Dan

Curator: Cheng Jing

 

Introduction

 

 

 

 

Art, as a perceptual and expressive system distinct from language, has always transcended cultural and geographical boundaries through its unique forms, constructing a dialogical space that connects individual experiences with diverse civilizations. Personal Favorites / Coups de Coeur: Xindong Cheng’s Contemporary Art Collection brings together 53 works by 48 artists from nine countries around the world. Featuring media including painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, the exhibition reflects the fusion and exploration of contemporary art within a multicultural context.

 

 

Rather than a straightforward geographical juxtaposition of East and West, Personal Favorites / Coups de Coeur invites a more profound inquiry into values and systems of thought. The exhibition is structured into two thematic sections: It’s Me, It’s Us and Landscapes. These dual perspectives—of the individual and the collective, of sensibility and rationality, of introspection and external observation—open deeper pathways of resonance between the viewer and the artwork. Through fluid transitions between figuration and abstraction, material and concept, the artists engage with pressing contemporary concerns such as identity, historical memory, the politics of the body, and social structures.

 

 

As part of the Festival Croisements (Sino-French cultural exchange programme), the exhibition expands the scope of international dialogue in contemporary art, while also responding to Guangdong’s unique geographical position and its pivotal role in cross-cultural exchange. It stands not only as a public presentation of a private collection but also as an intellectual journey through cultural boundaries, modes of seeing, and visions of the world.

 

We hope that within these works—emerging from a range of cultural and artistic contexts—visitors may sense the energy and potential released by contemporary art, and in turn reflect anew on the relationships between self and world, experience and narration. In this moment of cultural convergence, may the exhibition offer a broader lens through which to see, and a renewed spiritual compass for navigating the present.

 

 

Marathon on University Street·Antanas Sutkus

Lithuania

Gelatin silver print

55 x 37cm

1959

 

Weng Fen

China

Chromogenic print

124 x 187cm

2000 

 

Mirror 

Fu Zhongwang

China

Bronze, Iron, Chair

166 x 100 x 500cm

2001

 

Wang Ningde

China

Archival pigment print 

50 x 40cm

2002

 

Made in 1968

Cao Kai

China

Video

9'46'' 

2005

 

The Kiss

Wang Keping

France

Bronze

H: 40cm

2008

 

ZHU Zhi Wu=ZHU

Wang Gongxin

China

4-channel video installation

218 2’18’’

2013