K11 Art Foundation

Xu Zhen was born in 1977. He lives and works in Shanghai.

Xu Zhen has been considered as an iconic figure in Chinese contemporary art. In 2004, Xu won the prize for ‘Best Artist’ at the China Contemporary Art Award. His practice covers various media such as installations, video, painting and performance, etc.

Xu Zhen has exhibited internationally, at museums and biennales, such as, Venice Biennale (2001, 2005), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2004), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), MoMA PS1 (New York, 2006), Tate Liverpool (2007), Hayward Gallery (London, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2013), Armory Show (New York, 2014), Long Museum (Shanghai 2015), Al Riwaq Art Center (Qatar, 2016), Sydney Biennale (2016), Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2017), Sharjah Biennial (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, 2019), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, 2020), among others.

Aside from being an artist, Xu Zhen is also a curator. In 2006, he co-curated together with other artists major exhibitions in Shanghai and was one of the initiators of Art-Ba-Ba (www.art-ba-ba.com), a leading online forum for discussion and critique of contemporary art in Shanghai. In 2009, Xu Zhen established ‘MadeIn Company’, a contemporary art creation corporate that focused on the production of creativity and devoted to the research of contemporary culture’s infinite possibilities. In 2013, MadeIn Company launched XU ZHEN® which is committed to art creation and cutting-edge culture development. In 2014, MadeIn Company established MadeIn Gallery and in November 2016 launched the first ‘Xu Zhen Store’ in Shanghai.