This striking artwork features a stark black silhouette figure lurking behind a whimsical, childlike drawing of a smiling character. The juxtaposition of the two contrasting elements - the dark, ominous presence and the innocent, simplistic depiction - creates a disconcerting and unsettling mood. The use of charcoal and the raw, unfinished quality of the canvas lend the piece a raw, visceral feel. The artwork seems to explore the coexistence of light and dark, innocence and malevolence, inviting the viewer to ponder the complexities and duality of the human experience. ...
Owen Fu (b.1988, Guilin, China) is an artist whose artworks are derived from his observation of the world which contains the double entendre nature with art historical and contemporary reference, sincerity and humour, quirkiness, and poeticism. Of all the elements that make a painterly vision, for Owen its line that dominates. His paintings put the viewer into a state of flow, moving effortlessly through and across his intuitive use of line, structure, and faux-naïveté.
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Balice Hertling was founded in 2007 by Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling. Balice Hertling has hosted the debut solo shows of many artists like Camille Blatrix, Xinyi Cheng and Isabelle Cornaro—all of whom have gone on to earn widespread recognition. From 2012 to 2016, gallery founders Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling operated a project space in Manhattan. Returning to France in 2017, they relocated the main gallery to Paris’ Marais district and transformed the former Belleville location into a space for curated projects and shows by younger artists. Indeed, many artists represented by the gallery exemplify unique subcommunities of the emergent art world. This breadth of representation also translates to a breadth of medium, as the gallery represents painters as well as artists working in mixed media such as film, performance and sculptural objects. The gallery also represents artists whose careers are more established : British conceptual artist Stephen Willats, Syrian-born painter and sculptor Simone Fattal, and Italian artist Enzo Cucchi. In its programming and practices, Balice Hertling constantly works toward creating a more diverse and equitable art landscape. In this spirit, the gallery is proud to represent the Estate of Behjat Sadr, who was the first woman artist to be recognized as a modern master in Iran. As a result of the pandemic, the gallery co-founded « Palai » in the summer of 2021, a yearly exhibition hosting a small group of galleries from around the world, in historic locations in Lecce, a city in Italy's Puglia region. Palai is neither a curated exhibition nor a fair, it is thought to be a version of a residency, a collegial collaboration, where artists, galleries, and friends of the art world come together. In 2021 Balice Hertling relocated and brought closer both spaces in the Marais with a new main space inaugurated by a Ser Serpas scultpure solo show, and a new showroom and project space on rue de Montmorency. ...
