Cultured Magazine

February/March 2015

Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/464494

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 85 of 219

84 CULTURED IMAGE COURTESY ULLENS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART M ichael Chow moved to London from China in the early-'50s and took up painting at Central Saint Martins. That was before he became one of the world's most famous restaurateurs in Swinging London (and now the world). For dozens of years, most have known him as the owner of the MR CHOW chain of fine dining restaurants—famous for their succulent duck dishes—and as an authoritative art collector. But lately he's returned to his roots in more ways than one with a new show of painting in his birth country of China in a new show called "Voice of My Father" at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (through March 22). Recently, the famously bespectacled Chow could be see bounding around his Los Angeles mansion in paint- stained work clothes, creating frenzied, heavily textured mixed-media paintings out of house paint, gold leaf, trash and raw egg. The resulting works are massive in scale and look perhaps like a choppy sea seen from above: tumultuous and beautiful. In addition to his own work, Chow is lending the UCCA several of his most famous portraits—including those by Basquiat, Schnabel, Haring, Warhol and Urs Fischer—to hang in the show. By Maxwell Williams MR. CHOW THE ARTIST

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Cultured Magazine - February/March 2015