Impressions of the opening ceremony "A different Landscape" in Chongqing

The opening of my solo exhibition “A Different Landscape” at the Chaotianmen International Art Center on the 72nd and 73rd floors of the Raffles City Building in Chongqing was a great success.

The opening ceremony, which featured several speeches and a video message from the Swiss Ambassador to Beijing, Jürg Burri, was very well attended.

The highlight of the exhibition was definitely my new and largest artwork in China, called "Chaotianmen," measuring 6.7 x 1.5 meters. I chose this name because, firstly, I painted it on the 73rd floor of the building at Chaotianmen Square, and secondly because it represents the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers. Chaotianmen Square was once Chongqing's gateway to the world, and all, or at least most, of Chongqing's trade took place here for centuries.

In addition to this major artwork, I exhibited for the first time an installation of twelve rotating centrifugal artworks on vinyl records entitled “Movement and Joy.”

To make the artworks rotate, I installed them on turning display tables. Additionally, the individual artworks themselves feature a rotating AR layer and a unique, AI-generated musical composition that can be activated with the "Artivive" app.

One section of the 1100 m² exhibition space on two floors was dedicated to my panda series. With seven panda paintings on display, this marks also the biggest collection of panda artworks in a single exhibition 

This year I plan to start painting pandas again in my studio in Switzerland after a break of over five years.

A smaller area of ​​the venue was dedicated to my Chongqing series, which I created in 2018 and which traveled from Chongqing to Zurich and Rome back in 2018. Thanks to loans from collectors for this exhibition, we were able to show eight artworks from this series.

In the gallery that connects the two upper levels, we showed smaller artworks from the series “Gravity Germania”, “Cigarette Packaging Series” and “Food Stamp Series”. 

Above: View from the 73rd floor down to the 72nd floor.

In addition to the large Gravity artwork, we displayed several other Gravity-related artworks on the 72nd floor.

Thanks to the loans of artworks, we were able to create a rough timeline of this series, which is very important to me.

I am very grateful for the wonderful opportunity to exhibit here and have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of being able to paint in such a fantastic location with one of the most beautiful views of Chongqing.

The exhibition runs until May 28, 2025.

Above image: "Chaotianmen" seen from the gallery on the 73rd level. 

Best wishes from Schwanden, 

Turn your life colorful,

Antonio