Florian Krewer
Nice Dog

Curated by Matthew Higgs, director and chief curator, White Columns, and Victor Wang, artistic & executive director, M WOODS Museum

Assistant curator, Qi Yuanlin
M WOODS 798
December 02, 2023 – March 02, 2024

Installation view, Florian Krewer “Nice Dog”, M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2023, Image courtesy of M WOODS

M WOODS Museum proudly presents “Nice Dog,” the most comprehensive survey of the paintings of Florian Krewer (b. 1986, Gerolstein, Germany) to date, and the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Asia. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Aspen Art Museum, which showed the artist's first institutional solo exhibition in the United States earlier this year.

With the New York night as his muse, Krewer paints all the vastness, liberation, and uncertainty it has to offer. Derived from lived experiences and fantasy, the artist creates a seductive world of magical encounters set against the staged backdrops of imagined landscapes and interiors. Primal needs, longing, and precarious interactions are depicted with the greater intention of revealing our collective vulnerabilities.

Exploring the last six years of Krewer’s career, the exhibition features new paintings alongside a selection of paintings from collections around the world. It charts Krewer’s journey since his 2017 graduation from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied under the artist Peter Doig. Krewer’s more recent paintings reflect the relentless and often anxious energy of New York, his newfound home.

Installation view, Florian Krewer “Nice Dog”, M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2023, Image courtesy of M WOODS

Exhibited in the urban sprawl of Beijing, Krewer’s work captures the off-beat pulse of city life, portraying figures in varying states of stress and release, ready for the night. In raw and intimate moments, Krewer's characters twist, merge, and engage with animals and shadows. Their actions, fraught with tension, blur the line between personal desires and societal expectations. “Nice Dog” delves deep into this dichotomy, exploring the complex interplay of private passions against the backdrop of public existence.