An exhibition featuring the work of Ed Moses and Qin Feng puts the two artists in a conversation across cultures through a shared artistic language. Ed Moses and Qin Feng make dynamic, gestural paintings influenced by both Eastern calligraphy and Western abstraction, yet each artist arrived at this common ground from different directions. Moses was one of the founding artists of the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, and over many decades he created one of the most diverse bodies of abstraction in late twentieth-century American art. As with many American artists of the post-war generation, especially on the West Coast, Moses was drawn to Buddhist thought, and he became a practitioner in the early 1970s. Qin Feng is one of the key figures of China’s avant-garde art movement and founder of MOCA Beijing. He has developed an expansive mode of painting deeply rooted in traditional Chinese calligraphy, although Western art has always been an important stimulus in his work. Qin Feng and the late Ed Moses share an interest in the relationship between the artist’s body and painterly gesture, and especially the effects of chance and spontaneity in the painting process.
Ed Moses & Qin Feng is on view through September 14 at Blain|Southern 4 Hanover Square, Mayfair, London W1S 1BP, UK. photographs courtesy of the artists and Blain|Southern
