San Gimignano
Beijing
Les Moulins
Habana
Roma
Sao Paulo
Paris
Dubai
Galleria Continua, founded in 1990 in San Gimignano, Italy is celebrating 15 years of Galleria Continua in China with 16 different artists.
It was the first foreign gallery with an international program to open in Beijing, China in 2004, and subsequently in 2007 launched a new site for large-scale creations – Les Moulins – in the Parisian countryside and in 2015 opened a space in La Habana, Cuba devoted to cultural projects designed to overcome every frontier. With almost 30 years of practice, Galleria Continua remains faithful to its spirit of perpetual evolution and committed to developing public interest in contemporary art through its two values, generosity and altruism.
These two values, as well as the gallery’s close relationships to artist Chen Zhen and his wife Xu Min, led Galleria Continua to be the first major foreign gallery to arrive in China. The gallery is positioned in the famous 798 Art District, an area that used to be in the outskirts of the city and became since then one of the most visited places in China.
After 15 successful years, which include Galleria Continua’s participation in the first contemporary art fair in Beijing as well as the inaugural show featuring 16 artists from 5 continents, Galleria Continua in Beijing continues to bring important artists from all over the world for the first time to China.
To celebrate this 15th anniversary and look towards the future, the works of 15 artists plus one are presented in a group exhibition. These artists have been part of this story along with major exhibitions that our space hosted for the first time here in China : Ai Weiwei, Kader Attia, Daniel Buren, Loris Cecchini, Chen Zhen, Carlos Garaicoa, Antony Gormley, Carsten Höller, Anish Kapoor, Giovanni Ozzola, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Kan Xuan, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Zhuang Hui and Qiu Zhijie. Just like our history, the exhibition will evolve during its duration via a specific work In Situ by Daniel Buren.
Most importantly, the exhibition is consolidating and representing the ideology of the three founders, an ideology that has been the basis for the development and position of Galleria Continua in relation to the world around it, and its core value, as expressed in an interview by our founder Lorenzo Fiaschi on the occasion of the 25 year anniversary:
“For Mario, Maurizio and myself, culture is a meeting, it’s about making our differences a source of creativity, of beauty, of union and of love.”
GALLERIA CONTINUA / Beijing
