Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to announce the opening reception of Rider on the Horizon, a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Mongolian master Chimeddorj, to take place on Friday, 13 January 2017, from 6-8pm at the gallery. (Exhibition until 11^th February).

Rider on the Horizon will be our first gallery exhibition of 2017, and we are honoured to have the Mongolian Consul to Hong Kong and Macao, Mr. OCH Tsoggerel, to preside at the opening reception. We hope to bring everyone together to celebrate this special moment; please join us!

Creating a bridge between the past and the present that speaks intensely to the place of tradition in the modern world is no easy task for any artist. For a contemporary Mongolian who has been a witness to immense social and political upheavals over the past half century, the task involves finding a suitable place for the past as well as making the modern relevant for his own history. For Chimeddorj, the nomadic culture of Mongolia is where the unanchored fluidity of modern culture meets traditional life.

In both historical and aesthetic terms, at the very centre of the Mongolian sensibility is the horse, an animal that even today arouses great pride and a powerful sense of cultural identity. And yet, among the numerous artists for whom horse culture is central, few have truly succeeded in capturing the tragic heroic spirit that is inherent in the animal. In Chimeddorj’s case, the horse’s power and elegance illuminate both its life as a domesticated animal as well as an unbound spirit roaming the harsh freedom of the wide Mongolian Steppe. This identification with the plight of modern life lends Chimeddorj’s works a lyrical, as well as metaphysical power.

Since the late 1990s Chimeddorj has turned increasingly to the medium of ink painting, in so doing he has also revived Mongolian art’s natural affinity with China’s tradition. His emotional investment in the life of the horse gives it a range of symbolic association previously unknown in this genre, and for the Chinese audience this opens up new artistic vista that prompts interpretation from the tradition of ink painting. Indeed Chimeddorj has been invited to participate in major Chinese exhibitions, including the 5th International Ink Painting Biennial of Shenzhen (2006) and the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012). In Hong Kong, Chimeddorj was also one of the major artists in the ground-breaking exhibition of Mongolian art, Modern Mongolia: From Steppe to Urban Dynamics, at Hanart Square in 2011.

At the age of 21, after completing his military service, Chimeddorj began to study painting with the famous Mongolian artists, Ts. Jamsran and C. Renchin. Entering the Mongolian State University of Education, he studied drawing with G. Odon, and graduated with honours in 1984. Chimeddorj’s wide body of work, including paintings, sculptures and prints, has since won wide acclaim and has been collected by museums and private sectors internationally.