2022.07.30 – 09.03
Opening hour: 12.00-18.00
Closed on Sun, Mon, National holiday
Also closed between 16th – 20th Aug. for summer holiday
Cooperation: Rossi & Rossi

We are pleased to announce the group show of the four artists: Kesang LAMDARK, Tsherin SHERPA, Tenzing RIGDOL, Nortse.

Kesang LAMDARK was born in 1963 in Dharamsala, India, Lamdark grew up in Switzerland where he later apprenticed and worked as an interior architect. He went on to study at Parsons New School for Design in New York, and he achieved an MA in Visual Art at Columbia University. The artist lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
Lamdark’s plastic sculptures and mirrored light boxes are evidence of his displaced and multicultural upbringing. His search for an appropriate cultural space ultimately turned inwards and he came to understand and reconnect with his Tibetan heritage while living in the West. Lamdark’s Tibetan-Western identity lies in his ability to understand and find a balance between both cultures. Combining unusual materials, from hair to plastic, beer cans to nail polish, Lamdark’s life and works bring together the unfamiliar and revel in recycling everyday objects into works of art.

Tsherin SHERPA was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1968, Sherpa currently works between California and Kathmandu. When he was twelve years old, he began studying traditional Tibetan thangka painting with his father, Master Urgen Dorje Sherpa, a renowned thangka artist from Ngyalam, Tibet. After studying computer science and Mandarin in Taiwan, he returned to Nepal, where he collaborated with his father on several important projects, including thangka and monastery mural paintings. In 1998, Sherpa immigrated to California; there, he began to explore his own style – reimagining traditional tantric motifs, symbols, colours and gestures, which he resolutely placed in contemporary compositions.
The artist represented Nepal at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with his solo exhibition Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La.

Tenzing RIGDOL was born in 1982 in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rigdol and his family were granted political asylum in the USA in 2002. Rigdol is a contemporary Tibetan artist whose work ranges from painting, sculpture, drawing and collage, to digital, video-installation, performance art and site specific pieces. His paintings are the products of collective influences and interpretations of age-old traditions; they are influenced by philosophy; often capture the ongoing issues of human conflicts; and have strong political undertones – for him, politics is an unavoidable element in his art. Indeed, in recent years Rigdol has become a focus for young Tibetan diaspora precisely because of the political nature of his art. He has been widely exhibited internationally and his artworks are included in public and private collections around the world. In 2011 his widely reported Our Land, Our People involved the covert transportation of 20 tonnes of soil out of Tibet, through Nepal, to Dharamsala. There, displaced Tibetans were given the opportunity to walk on their home soil once again. The journey to smuggle soil across three borders is documented in Bringing Tibet Home, a documentary directed by Tenzin Tsetan Choklay, which was awarded the Young European Jury Award (Prix du Jury de Junes Européens) at the 27th edition of FIPA (Interna tional Festival of Audiovisual Programmes. In 2014, Rigdol became one of the only two contemporary Tibetan artists to be included in the exhibition Tibet and India: New Beginnings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His work Pin Drop Silence: Eleven-Headed Avalokitesvara was also the first work by a contemporary Tibetan artist to be acquired by the Met.

Nortse was born Norbu Tsering in 1963 in Lhasa, and has studied at various schools, including Tibet University in Lhasa, the Central Arts Academy in Beijing and art academies in Guangzhou and Tianjing. Since the mid-1980s, Nortse has been moving between a diversity of mediums – photography, performance, painting, installation and ready-made multimedia compositions and sculpture. The experience the artist amassed resulted in his creation of striking mixed-media works that experiment with forms and imagery from traditional art and culture. His subjects range from landscapes to (self) portraits, from claustrophobic interiors and expansive horizons, from the sacred to the profane. The works of Nortse address universal concerns through a tightly focused Lhasa (Nortse’s home) lens: global warming, environmental degradation, overpopulation, alcoholism among the youth, the erosion of culture and tradition, and the desire to establish one’s own identity in a world of mass media. Given the recent history of Tibet, the artist addresses these issues with an added urgency and poignancy.

Satoko Oe Contemporary