BEHIND THE MIRROR

18 september – 25 october 2025

Opening reception : september 18 from 6pm

Artists
Antony Gormley, Andreas Mayer-Brennenstuhl, Cao Yu, Chen Zhen, Du Zhenjun, Felicitas Yang & Armando Milano, Harald Kröner, Romain Ventura, Santo Tolone, Shu Rui, Wang Tianyu, Yang Jiechang

Curators
Martina Köppel-Yang I Joseph Cui

Behind the Mirror：Contemporary Self-Portraits

Martina Köppel-Yang

Behind the Mirror presents self-portraits by thirteen artists from different generations and cultural contexts. The media employed are as diverse as the artists themselves, ranging from painting, photography, and video to objects, sculpture, and installation. The exhibition title refers to the particular position and perspective of the artist in the act of creating a self-portrait. The mirror, traditionally the quintessential tool of self-reflection, today finds its equivalents in cameras and other devices that function as electronic mirrors. The artist — situated behind the mirror — is at once reflected image, creator, and spectator of the reflection.

At a time when self-editing through selfies on social media has become a dominant daily practice and a powerful surface of projection, to look at self-portraits by artists offers a welcome counterpoint. The artist’s gaze transcends the mere surface of the mirror; it pierces through the deceptive reflection in search of the true image.

Contemporary self-portraits adopt a wide range of strategies of self-representation: from realism to metonymy, from abstraction to playfulness, from poetic performance to self-exposure, from Louise Bourgeois’s radical “I am my work” to the conceptual cancellation of the self. Yet the act of self-editing remains an integral part of all these forms of self-representation. Direct eye contact with the viewer continues to characterize many self-portraits, underlining the centrality of the gaze — simultaneously turned outward and inward. Ultimately, the question persists: whose self is being reflected?

As Mieke Bal observes, “The identity between the work and its subject (…) is not unified; it is fragmented by the intrusion of the reader/viewer whose position is inherently paradoxical.” The artist, as part of the reflected self, thus becomes not only subject but also implied spectator. At the same time, self-reflection, as a mode of reading and viewing, becomes a way of reflecting on the very act of art-making. In this sense, the self-portrait is always a reflection on the question of the nature of art and the role of the artist. 

The exhibition approaches the subject from several perspectives: representation, reflection, gaze, and identity. 

Representation

Antony Gormley is widely recognized for his life-size sculptures modelled after his own body. The work shown here entitled Float 5 (2018), however, is a small iron cast — equally typical of his practice. Like most of his sculptures, it is devoid of distinguishing features and represents instead the generic image of a human being. For Gormley, the work is not conceived as a self-portrait in the narrow sense, but rather as a representation of the human body in relation to space and the surrounding world.

Yang Jiechang’s Self-Portrait at Forty (1996), by contrast, although depicting a generic male figure, too, is explicitly framed as a representation of the artist at a specific moment in his life, as the title indicates. Yang is less concerned with likeness or realism than with expressing vital energy through bold black brushstrokes. These strokes embody the artist’s character as much as the figure itself. His video Six Two Zen (2018), in which the 62-year-old artist pulls grimacing faces, likewise marks a particular moment of self-representation. Here Yang wittily casts himself as a Buddhist Arhat, one who has attained insight into the nature of existence.

Santo Tolone’s photograph Saint (2025) constitutes a kind of still life self-portrait. Instead of depicting his own features, the artist presents himself as a plate of peeled fruits. Part of a series of still life portraits, the work evokes the legacy of Milanese Renaissance painter Arcimboldo (1527–1593), famous for his composite heads made of fruits, vegetables, and everyday objects. Like Arcimboldo, and originally based in Milan, too, Tolone uses fruit and colour as symbolic markers of character and mood. Yet, through formal precision and modernist reduction, Saint acquires an elegant and poetic stance, playfully negotiating the ambivalence between symbolic representation and decorative object.

Gaze and Reflection

We can only perceive ourselves at a distance. Romain Ventura’s series of oil paintings Les Angoissées (The Anxious Ones, 2024) presents the artist’s face dramatically illuminated in baroque fashion, staring into a mirror with an expression of fear and disquiet. These works recall Courbet’s Le Désespéré (1845). Yet whereas Courbet confronts the viewer with a piercing gaze, Ventura redirects his own gaze towards an invisible mirror, introducing a second layer of reflection. His paintings resemble film stills: the viewer appears to observe the artist through a camera lens as he contemplates his own image. In this way, Ventura constructs a narrative that lends universal resonance to this body of work.

The gaze also structures Armando Milano and Felicitas Yang’s diptych Portrait-Autoportrait (2025). The artists explore the concept of mutual reflection and the perception of self through the other’s eyes. Each photographed the other behind textured glass, which distorts and blurs their features. Here, perception and representation are revealed as approximations: the image behind the mirror — the supposed “true” image — remains inaccessible in its full complexity.

Harald Kröner’s works can be read as symbolic representations of the artist’s persona. Combining light — primarily neon — with linguistic systems, he creates visual poems unfolding in space. The neon writing gracehoper (2023) alludes to the artist as a seeker of intuition. Was sich zeigt, ist was sich zeigt (2025) consists of a neon ring encircling a black disc inscribed with the phrase “what appears is what appears.” While reading the text, the viewer simultaneously perceives their own reflection in the glossy surface, replicating the artist’s original encounter with the work. The tautology thus functions as a self-portrait in its own right. Kröner’s multiple me, myself & I (1999–2025) consists of a transparent lightbox containing a slide with an image of the very same box at its center, thus simultaneously exposing its interior and generating a double reflection. As in the previous work, Kröner constructs a self-referential circuit grounded in the principle of mutual reflection.

Identity, Discontinuity, Autonomy

Discontinuity and dislocation are central to the practices of Du Zhenjun, Cao Yu, Wang Tianyu, and Shu Rui.

Du Zhenjun’s Le blue de Du and Main Rouge (Du’s Blue, Red Hand, both 2025) are typical of  his recent work. The artist draws upon digital photographs and AI-generated imagery as material for his paintings. For the self-portraits presented here, Du used iPhone photographs of his mirrored reflection as templates. This strategy of double reflection serves not only as a means of introspection but also — echoing his earlier digital photo collages such as Tower of Babel (2010) — as a pointed commentary on our contemporary media-saturated society.

Cao Yu’s video I Have (2019) presents the artist enumerating personal characteristics, biographical details, and qualities deemed desirable by society. Each sentence begins with the words “I have.” The order is deliberately arbitrary, underscoring the multiplicity of attributes that shape identity. Yet the quasi-mechanical rhythm of enumeration suggests the extent to which societal norms shape personal subjectivity.

Wang Tianyu deploys visual disruption in her photographic collages. The Moment of Reaction, the Cake Was Smashed (2024) fragments the artist’s face into incoherent parts, as though assembled from shards of memory oscillating between joy and fear. By objectifying her personal experiences, Wang reflects critically on the condition of women in society and on the persistence of gender-based violence.

Shu Rui’s Déracinés (2023) depicts the artist’s residence permit alongside, in the lower right-hand corner, an image of refugees crowded onto a boat — a reference to news footage of Lampedusa migrants. Painted in a naïve pop fashion, the work underscores the disorienting transformation of self-perception experienced in the life of an emigrant.

The question of what defines identity, both personal and cultural, is also central to Chen Zhen’s La chose la plus importante (1990). On top of his former identity papers, the artist inscribed the sentence: “The most important thing in art is to show the artist’s identity card first.” Chen elaborated an alternative concept of cultural identity, namely transculturality, grounded in the notions of trans-experience and synergy. If art is understood as a field of energies, thoughts, and imagination, it can transcend rigid structures and definitions, leading to new perspectives and modes of existence.

The largest work in the exhibition is Andreas Mayer-Brennenstuhl’s installation autonom-souverän-neutralgrau: andreas mayer-brennenstuhl (2001), originally conceived for his debut exhibition at the Stuttgart Academy of Art. Comprising MDF panels, a military coat, a watering can, the words “autonom-souverän-neutralgrau” (autonomous, sovereign, neutral grey), the artist’s name, and a portrait, the installation constitutes what he terms an “alias self-portrait.” And indeed, Mayer-Brennenstuhl replaced his own likeness with that of Peter Würtenberger, then head of BILD-ONLINE. Employing the sober visual language and modernist aesthetics typical of his oeuvre, he transforms the self-portrait into a political statement, invoking the central concepts of modern bourgeois society —autonomy, sovereignty, neutrality—while undermining them from within by evoking the colour “neutral grey,” a term that exposes them as mere aliases, even mirages. The installation thus creates tension between the concept of the autonomy of the work of art and the reality of its social determinations, ultimately questioning the very nature of art beyond its self-sufficient appearance.

Curators

Martina Köppel-Yang

Is an independent scholar and curator specializing in contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1980s. She has authored extensive works on the subject, including her noteworthy Ph.D. thesis, ‘Semiotic Warfare – The Chinese Avant-garde 1979 – 1989: A Semiotic Analysis’ (Hong Kong: timezone 8, 2003), which has become a reference book on Chinese art from the 1980s. Additionally, she serves as a member of the advisory board of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. 

Joseph Cui

Director of espace temps, curator and art critics. Specialized in Chinese artists in France. He holds degrees in philosophy from the Ecole des Bernardins and in Comparative Literature from Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. With a background of dedicated researcher, his focus holds within study consists of a whole century of Chinese artists in France, spanning from the beginning of the 20th to the actual generation. As a close associate of François Cheng, he has initialed to build up an archive of Chinese artists in France and to analyze the transcultural phenomenon of their artistic creations.

Artistes

Antony Gormley

Is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos.Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise.

Andreas Mayer-Brennenstuhl

Born in 1957 in Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg.

Freelance artist, university professor, author, artivist, certified art therapist.

He studied at the Nürtingen University of Art and Design under Professors K.H. Türk and G. Dreher, as well as at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart under Professor Micha Ullman.

Since 1985, he has held exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions both domestically and internationally.

His focus lies on installations, actions, and interventions within artistic and social contexts, as well as participatory projects and collaborations.

Cao Yu

1988 born in Liaoning Province, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China

Cao Yu’s unique artistic practice courageously explores issues of the body, gender, and identity. Using her own body to transcend boundaries, she speaks clearly and powerfully for 

herself and boldly represents a new generation of artists. Her works challenge social norms and offer fresh interpretations of contemporary issues related to women. In this process, this free-spirited and deeply focused artist opens up new possibilities for us all.

Chen Zhen 

(1955-2000) was a Chinese visual artist. Placing the body, illness, and Chinese medicine at the heart of his work, Chen Zhen explored the relationships between matter and spirit, the collective and the individual, as well as interiority and exteriority throughout his life. Coming from a family of doctors fluent in both English and French, he aimed through his work to connect traditional Chinese thought with Western culture. Through his creations, especially his uniquely composite installations, Chen Zhen forged philosophical and sensitive links, bridging Western modernity with the traditions of Confucian and Maoist China.

Du Zhenjun

Born in 1961, he was trained as a painter and sculptor at the Institutes of Arts and Trades in Shanghai and the Fine Arts College at the University of Shanghai and garnered M.A. from the Regional School of Fine Arts of Rennes, France in 1999. Despite his classical training, Du became one of the first generation of artists to incorporate digital technologies into art pieces, producing interactive installations and describing digital media to be “a way of working on the dimension of power inherent to a society of information and new technologies.” Du’s works explore themes of “Modern Man” and human tragedy. Specifically, he highlights the ecstasy of human behavior in light of suffering and challenges in conveying what he calls the “universal human condition.”

Felicitas et Armando 

Both had culturally displaced upbringings. On the one hand, Felicitas grew up in Paris, in a Chinese-German household, whereas Armando was born into an Italian family that emigrated to Columbus, Ohio. Both took a film class in high school, which lead them to grow a passion for cinema. They met in 2013, while attending the New York Film Academy, from which they graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in filmmaking. Even though they studied film directing, they had a knack for the technical and often worked together on a large variety of projects, Armando usually as a lighting technician and Felicitas as a camera assistant.

Harald Kröner 

Born in 1962.

1984-90 Studied at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design under Rudolf Schoofs.

1994 Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation Scholarship.

2002/03 Bartels Foundation Studio Scholarship, Basel.

2005/06 Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris Residency.

Romain Ventura 

Romain Ventura draws his themes and tools from the flows and mutations of our modern lives. His paintings are based on photos captured with his mobile phone. His loved ones or strangers, workers or the homeless, captured in their daily lives, primarily in interiors or urban landscapes. Then comes the work in the studio. The oil painting. With its long time for reflection, analysis, physical struggle, and sublimation of reality. Plays of framing, fractures of patterns, light effects: Romain Ventura’s painting reveals the banality of our lives and our digital loneliness multiplied in the age of globalization. Revealing the flip side of things, their darkness and hidden beauty.

Santo Tolone 

Born in1979 in Como, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan. His educational training was largely shaped by a long term involvment with Isola Art Center in Milan, a community based, artist-run organization. Santo’s artistic and curatorial practice investigates exchange, interaction, and dialectical encounters, as well as collaboration with other artists. His exhibition, L’Indiano in giardino, or As you enter the exhibition, you consider this group show by an artist you don’t know by the name of Mr. Rossi, took place all around the Isola neighborhood. In 2008, after five years of collaborating with artist Matteo Mascheroni, as Santomatteo, Santo began working independently. With interventions ranging between video, photography, installation, and sculpture, his practice is an overall attempt to trace the path from mental construct to signification and from scheme to realization, thus becoming the opposite of abstraction.

Shu Rui 

She was born in Suzhou, China, and now lives and works in Limoges and Paris after graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Limoges.

Her painting style is more or less influenced by the global environment, particularly by different media viewing habits. It often exhibits an unstable characteristic: neither a fixed creative subject nor a defined research object, with even backgrounds occasionally omitted.

She depicts things through a fragmented and decentralized approach to realism. Her work combines both autobiographical and documentary dimensions. She primarily focuses on portraying—in the sense of “narrating”—the objects she owns: her clothes, bags, iron, books, mobile phone, food, and packaging of products she has consumed. She renders them with a kind of reverence, copying images from packaging as if reproducing the work of a great master.

Wang Tianyu 

She born in China in 1997, she is based in Lausanne, Switzerland and Paris, France. Her work revolves around bodily experiences and phenomena of consciousness, taking the uncomfortable feelings of everyday life as a starting point and developing toward surrealism and fantasy, sometimes even grotesque directions. This approach aims to disrupt and dissolve the inherent properties and functions of things from both visual and narrative perspectives, using the mundane to confront the mundane.

In her image creation, actions serve as the narrative occurrence, and images are created as a result. Through such “New Photographic Actions,” she opposes everything she disapproves of with everything she endorses. Her work navigates the “gaps” between memory, experience, and imagination, creating fluid narratives with multilayered meanings characterized by heartfelt imagery. In her works, photography is the “gap” between the internal and external realms. She connects personal experiences with collective history through this process, transforming personalized consciousness into shared awareness. Her creations are deeply influenced by the folklore of her hometown and by art history and psychology.

Yang Jiechang 

Yang Jiechang is a contemporary Chinese artist, born in 1956 in Guangdong. He lives and works in Paris and Heidelberg. Trained from a young age in traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting, he graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Invited to exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in 1989, he eventually settled in France. He is known for his works combining layers of ink, ceramics, and sculpture, exploring political and philosophical upheavals.