Ma Kelu 2009-03-18
Ma Kelu's Studio,
Beijing
“From 1987 onwards, up until the first few years of the 1990s, the interaction and communication between Chinese and Western people was very desirable, very natural and extremely innocent. During that time I met many friends from abroad, and they would bring along gifts as they came in and out of the country. These gifts were usually contemporary music or art books, so in those seven or eight years I accumulated many of them.”
Biography:
Ma Kelu (b. 1954, Shanghai) is an artist living and working in Beijing.
After being sent to the countryside for ‘re-education’ during the Cultural Revolution, Ma studied painting in Beijing from 1973 to 1974. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ma was an active member of the No Name Group.
After meeting Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu in 1974, Ma took part in a series of unofficial exhibitions, including the ‘Eleven Persons' exhibition held in Zhang Wei’s apartment (1985), the ‘Beijing Landscape' painting exhibition (Jingshan Park, Beijing, 1978), the first and second 'No Name Group' exhibitions (1979, 1981), the ‘Ten Persons' painting exhibition (Chaoyang Theatre, Beijing, 1985) and the ‘Seven Persons' painting exhibition held in an American journalist’s apartment in Beijing (1985).
After moving to New York City in 1987, he returned in 2006 to Beijing where he continues to live and work as an artist.
