At Longlati Foundation’s New Shanghai Space, Emerging Artists Take the Spotlight

Shows by French artist Pol Taburet and Polish artist Tomasz Kręcicki ingaugurate the new location.

Installation view of "Pol Taburet: Anamorphosis" (2024). Courtesy of Longlati, Shanghai.

Co-founded in 2017 by David Su and Zihao Chen, the Longlati Foundation has maintained a mission centered on the themes of international women artists from the 20th century, post-90s Chinese art, and cultural diversity. Recently, Longlati found a new home in the Jing’an District of Shanghai on Wen’an Road, heralding a new chapter for the foundation.

Marking the occasion, Longlati is presenting two inaugural solo exhibitions, both of which premiered on April 3, 2024. “Pol Taburet: Anamorphosis” features a range of the French artists recent work, comprised of paintings and installations. Taburet (b. 1997), lives and works in Paris, and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

Inside a gallery space with in the far corner a pile of oversize nails, each a few feet long, and a painting on the wall and another sculpture partially seen through the gap in the walls.

Installation view of “Pol Taburet: Anamorphosis” (2024). Courtesy of Longlati, Shanghai.

Though his work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions internationally, the present show is Taburet’s first solo in Asia, and highlights their proclivity for experimentation, tapping various techniques and influences into each work—ranging from pop culture and art history to folklore and mythology from around the world. Sculpture is a newer addition to Taburet’s practice, which can be seen here specifically in the installations, which have a discernible clarity, wherein his painting frequently convey an element of the ethereal or otherworldly. Fork Clarity (2024), for example, installed in a corner and made up of large-scale pieces akin to nails, plays on perceptions of space in relationship to the view. On view through August 16, the presentation offers a new audience to experience firsthand the scope of his creative inquiry.

Three graphic paintings hung along a gallery wall.

Installation view of “Tomasz Kręcicki: Light as A Feather” (2024). Courtesy of Longlati Foundation, Shanghai.

Open through May 22, the second inaugural exhibition at Longlati is “Tomasz Kręcicki: Light as a Feather,” includes sixteen paintings that the artist made over the past year. Kręcicki (b. 1990) is a Polish artist based in Krakow, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, respectively.

Kręcicki’s work is recognizable for its graphic quality and unique depiction of light—both of which are on full display in the present show. Their compositions are at once whimsical and surprising, using unexpected framing to focus on surprising and whimsical vignettes frequently centered on human figuration. Fantastical forests seemingly populated by trees that are actually hair, or a foot protruding out of a patch of flowers like in Meadow (2022–23), let viewers catch a glimpse of the artist’s expansive imaginary world.

A thick band of black with a thinner band of puce at the bottom with dozens of black lines resembling hair growth coming from the bottom band.

Tomasz Kręcicki, Untitled / Hair (2023). Photo: Mateusz Torbus. Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin, Paris, Seoul.

The expertly juxtaposed work of Kręcicki’s and Taburet’s at Longlati reestablishes Longlati’s innovative exhibition program, and gives visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in the work of two disparate artists and their practices.

Pol Taburet: Anamorphosis” is on view through August 16, 2024, and “Tomasz Kręcicki: Light as A Feather” is on view through May 22, 2024, both at the Longlati Foundation, on the 4th, 30 Wen’an Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai.


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