Xiao Yao, or carefree, is a free and relaxed attitude towards the external world and a carefree, happy mindset to explore one’s inner self.

AroundSpace Gallery is honored to present eight artists’ group exhibition, A Happy Exploration, exploring their creative practices and trajectories.

Swiss artist Alois Lichtsteiner’s artworks were collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2018. He continues a steady pace in his art practice. His recent works made breakthroughs from his earlier signature styles. Using multiple layers of paint on canvas, he concealed brushwork under lustrous layers of colors. At the age of 75, he will have a solo retrospective exhibition at the Franz Gerstch Museum in Bern, Switzerland paying homage to his five-decade long career.

Born in Rotterdam in 1934, Klaas Gubbels is an important artist in the Netherlands. He is known for his active artmaking and his tireless energy even though he is more than 90 years old. We will present some of his most recent works here and are confident that they will bring our audience unexpected pleasure. Gubbles had a retrospective exhibition reviewing his 60-years of art practice at the Museum Anherm in 2024.

When facing creative processes and personal life, every artist has their own answer: to be an evergreen tree or to have a glorious bloom after a long-time growth. They have their own choices thanks to the opportunities provided by our time.

Ji Da Chun has been based in Berlin for many years. He gradually advances his study and analysis of Western painting by presenting one exhibition every year. Living in Europe, the center of Western art, and bearing a profound Eastern art tradition, Ji Da Chun creates artworks that bring viewers an exquisite and unique visual experience.

Kotscha Reist just concluded a solo exhibition in Bern, Switzerland this past May and published a new catalog in Zurich at the same time. His exhibitions and publications are well received and reviewed by many European art critics, who enthusiastically went through his art practice in the past eight years. The amount of work Reist makes each year decreases, yet the expression of his thoughts and feelings in these works continues to increase.

Everyone has their own experience and path in life. Every artist also has their own trajectory and style. Each style can be equally brilliant and dazzling.

Masaru Takanashi lives in Victoria Island, Canada for many years. His art practice perfectly aligns with his life, a half hermit-like status. Takanashi is also an important art collector who has his own in-depth collecting strategy in many fields and forms a macro view on Eastern and Western art. His artwork naturally grows out of his art background and knowledge. We look forward to seeing his most recent works at this exhibition.

Huang Yuanqing’s art practice follows two threads: an explicit one that can be seen in his abstract paintings, and a more implicit one that is embedded in his Chinese calligraphy study. The implicit thread of calligraphy practice nurtures the explicit thread of abstract painting consistently, which also enriches and empowers his abstract art vocabulary.

Marcel Gähler and Han Garidi, from Winterthur, Switzerland and Inner Mongolia, China respectively, share the same pastoral life and art practice. Gähler focuses on nature and culture, capturing tangible stories and scenes in his life. After a brief trip to Shanghai and Suzhou in 2023, he created images and stories familiar to us in his artwork. Han Garidi withdraws from city life and embraces the grassland. Yet his paintings go beyond depicting grasslands and are filled with new experiments. He cares more about emotions and narratives than colors and brushworks, with a more free, expressive style.

In his Carefree Wandering, Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi (369 BC – 286 BC) described a mammoth bird (Peng) that can fly thousands of miles and a large fish (Kun) that can swim tens of thousands of miles, both are creatures beyond ordinary imagination or comprehension and live in their own carefree status. The eight artists in this exhibition are like Peng and Kun, flying and swimming in their own imaginary world, happily exploring the essence of life and art, each of which is truly splendid and impressive!