History of Schoeni Art Gallery (Oct 2005)

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HISTORY of SCHOENI ART GALLERY

Steering his dream into reality, in 1992 Schoeni Gallery Ltd, the creation of Manfred Schoeni, opened its doors to the public. Centrally located in the heart of Hong Kong's SOHO area, it was with incredible entrepreneurial vision that Manfred Schoeni forged an unprecedented artistic liaison with China and exhibited their works internationally. Manfred Schoeni's greatest ambition was to devote his life to art, and soon his gallery space, with an impressive 3,000 square feet, became home to some of the first exhibitions of pioneering Chinese and Russian artists.

Since its opening, Schoeni Art Gallery have hosted over 125 exhibitions in its Hong Kong gallery alone, and today it is a two site gallery in Hong Kong. In order to strengthen the identity of the gallery's collection, its initial interest in the mixed talents of countries spanning Russia, China and Europe was pared down to a more intense focus on Chinese Contemporary Art in 1996. The gallery mounted its first exhibition of Liu Da Hong's works, in 1992 at the China Club in Hong Kong. This exhibition was the impetus for wide-ranging interest and media exposure in our artistic vision. Encouraged by such a dynamic start, Schoeni Gallery went on to issue some of the first professional publications in this field and orchestrated an array of traveling international exhibitions.

Since the gallery's debut in the international art scene, Schoeni Art Gallery has been actively providing a growing collection that includes over 2000 paintings that span a panoramic 100 artists. Its gallery space has dedicated itself to address a wide range of new interpretative expressions that are recently developing in oil paintings. The gallery's myriad artists have all enjoyed acclaim and success in their own rights, and many have been attributed with opening up new vistas to the experimental nature of the possibilities of Chinese Contemporary Art.

Publications by Schoeni Art Gallery play a major role in archiving primary source material for the history of Contemporary Chinese Art. One such group of artists that it has actively promoted is the newly formed Beijing Realism Group, which was created in reaction to, what they believed was, an adverse emphasis of the Avant-Garde movement domestically and internationally. Holding their first annual exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing in October 2004, this group, retrospectively, is now recognised as an elite amalgamation of the Chinese tradition in oil painting that is spearheaded by leaders such as Wang Yi Dong, Zhang Li, and Li Gui Jun, who enjoyed their first exhibition in the gallery space. Wang Yi Dong was part of the inspirational force that lent colour to our founder's desire to pursue his dream of opening our gallery.

In addition, other of the gallery's exclusive artists such as Shuai Mei, Chen Yu, Yu Chen and Zhang Lin Hai, have all been brought into the international artistic arena through the portal of our gallery. Due to the founder's vision ahead of his time, Yue Min Jin and his wide smiling characters, and Yang Shao Bin, who had their first solo exhibitions abroad at the gallery in 1996, have become iconic symbols of the Chinese Avant-Garde. Zhong Biao, who is now the representative artist for Dragon Air, also had his first solo exhibition abroad at the Schoeni Art Gallery in 1997, an important time for Chinese and Hong Kong history. To mention a more recent exhibition for our gallery, the gallery's new Director Nicole Schoeni highlighted an impressive overview of 43 artists and coordinated, "Through the Artist's Eyes - A Tribute to Manfred Schoeni" in 2004. This touching memorial exhibited the visual legacy of Manfred Schoeni's wide-reaching and formative influence in Chinese Contemporary Art and included works by the gallery's major artists through its 12 year history.

Other highlight events include the "Images of Women" serial exhibition, which explores the different interpretations of the female form by various established artists and is held almost every year at the gallery since 1995. "8+8-1 : Selected paintings by 15 Artists" is yet another innovative idea by the founder, where he asked each artist to paint a number of small panels in the vein of the gallery's focus of figurative art. The exhibition was displayed at 5 different venues around the world. Schoeni Art Gallery was also instrumental in the orchestration and assistance of curators for two touring exhibitions of Chinese Contemporary Art; China! And Chinart. China! Was exhibited at major museums in Germany, Austria, Singapore and Amsterdam. Chinart was exhibited over a two-year period at major museums in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Spain.

The gallery's expertise was also required by the Grand Hyatt, in the Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, which is an important building reflecting the future of China and taking Shanghai into the 21^st Century, in 1998 to act as the hotel's art consultant, as well as the China Club in Berlin to build their Chinese Contemporary Art Collection in 2003. The gallery has also extended its expert services to the field of conservation and restoration of works, through its collaboration with the renown Renate Kant, Director of Renate Kant Studio for Conservation and Restoration Pte Ltd.

More recently, Schoeni Art Gallery latest international exhibition was held, in joint vision, with the distinguished MKM Museum Küppersmühle, Germany, where the gallery's exclusive artists Wang Yi Dong and Zhang Lin Hai were invited to artistically support their contemporaneous leader in Chinese Contemporary Art, Cai Guo Qiang in a three manned show called "Light and Shadow".

Upcoming events, include a joint collaboration with the international and prestigious boutique Shanghai Tang, bringing Chinese Contemporary Art and fashion together in their limited edition Spring Collection 2006.

October 2005