Gu Xiong (born 1953) is a Canadian contemporary artist.
Life
Gu Xiong was born 1953 in Chongqing, Sichuan, China. At the age of 18, during the Chinese cultural revolution, Xiong was sent to live in the countryside where he sketched scenes of rural life. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts degree (1985) from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. In 1986, he attended an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta Canada, becoming the first artist from the People's Republic of China to do so. After returning to China, he was a part of the 1989 China Avant-Garde exhibition that was shut down by the Chinese police a few hours after it opened, four months before Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Xiong immigrated from China to Vancouver Canada in 1989.
Xiong currently lives in Vancouver, where he is a professor of art at the University of British Columbia.
Work
Xiong is a multidisciplinary artist who works in media as diverse as painting, drawing, photography, installation, performance, video and bronze sculpture. He is known largely for his paintings, performances and installation works. In Interior View-- Fenced Wall, performed in 1989 at the China Avant-garde exhibition in Beijing, he painted images of a fence on paper and onto his clothing and performed with his face painted in pantomime-style. He has also done numerous similarly titled works on paper.
Selected solo and duo exhibitions
2020 – Gu Xiong: The Remains of a Journey, Centre A Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Canton-sardine
2017 – Gu Xiong: Migration, The Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China
2017 – Pins, R Space, Vancouver, British Columbia.
2016 – A River of Migration, a mixed media installation, at the San Juan Islands of Museum of Art, Friday Harbor, Washington, US.
2014 – Gu Xiong; a journey exposed, Gordon Smith Gallery of Canada, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2013 – Chongqing 5 – A Room Filled with Memories (Gu Xiong/Sheng Hua), ATELIER AM ECK, Himmelgeister Str. 107E. Düsseldorf, Germany
2012–13 -Invisible in the Light, Boya Art Museum, Central China Nomal University, Wuhan, China.
2012 – Coquitlam Waterscapes, Evergreen Art Gallery, Coquitlam, British Columbia. Canada
2012 – Waterscapes: Reframed, the Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, Abbotsford, Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada
2011 – Waterscapes: Migration along the Vancouver Island, Fraser and Yangzi Rivers, Nanaimo Art Gallery
2010 – Waterscapes, solo exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, British Columbia
2008 – Gu Xiong/Yang Shu, Beijing Center for the Arts at Legation Quarter, Beijing, China
2008 – Red River, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada.
2006 – Toronto: I Am Who I Am, a photo instillation at the St. Patrick Subway Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
2005 – Shifting, Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2004 – Beyond Vision, Chongqing Art Museum, Chongqing, China
2004 – Here is What I Mean – Gu Xiong and Xu Bing, Museum London, London, Ontario, Canada
2003 – Small, medium, large, and Extra large, OBORO Gallery, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Selected group exhibitions
2017 – Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2017 – Rip It Up, The 2nd Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale, Chongqing Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China.
2016 – Mountains and Rivers Without End, Artlab Gallery, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
2016 – Mountains and Rivers, Centre for Contemporary Art, Quito and Cuenca Modern Art Museum, Cuenca, Ecuador
2015–16 – Beyond Image, Hubei Art Museum of Art, Wuhan, China
2015 – Top Time, LP Art Space, Chongqing, China
2015 – Material Future: The Architecture of Herzog & De Meuron and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2015 – Home (Hyphenated Home), Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
2014–15 – The Transformation of Canadian Landscape Art: Inside & Outside of being, Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an and Today’s Art Museum, Beijing, China
2014 -15 – Alex Colville, Art gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada