Forget Me Not
Château de Lantheuil, France | June 12 - July 10, 2025
Xu Xang
Forget Me Not is a solo exhibition by Xu Yang at the historic Château de Lantheuil, France (12 June – 10 July 2025). Blending Rococo influences with Chinese heritage, Xu’s paintings and sculptures explore memory, legacy, and time — creating a dialogue between East and West, past and present.
Curated by Lucy von Goetz, the exhibition reimagines still life through symbols both intimate and opulent. Set against the backdrop of a 17th-century château, it invites reflection on the beauty and fragility of cultural inheritance.
Xu Yang (b. 1996, Shandong) lives and works in London, UK. She studied Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon College of Arts (UAL) 2015-18, and graduated with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2020.
Xu Yang’s multidisciplinary practice explores themes of identity, sexuality, and culture, weaving together both personal and universal experiences. Her work is deeply rooted in an excavation of history, drawing on influences from the Rococo era, mythology, and her own Chinese heritage. This fusion allows her to create a contemporary narrative that addresses the complexities of human nature while reflecting the richness and challenges of her cultural background. Often inserting her own image into her painting, by directly confronting the viewer her work encourages audiences to question and challenge societal constructs.
Institutional exhibitions include "The Cult of Beauty", Wellcome Collection, London (2023). Xu was recently awarded a commission by Tate Collective for LGBTQIA+ history month (2023). She was the winner of the Barbican Arts Group Trust ArtWorks Open (2019), and was shortlisted for the Contemporary Young Artist Prize (2020). Recent solo exhibitions include ”Daughter, Sister, Mother, Monster”, Berntson Bhattacharjee, London (2024); “Imagine Yourself a Warrior", Mou Projects, Hong Kong (2023); "Therefore I am", Dio Horia, Athens (2022). She has been shown at Simon Lee Gallery, Josh Lilley Gallery, and Saatchi Gallery.
For the exhibition, Xu Yang (b. 1996 Shandong, China) will develop an entirely new body of work displayed throughout the Château, exploring recurring themes of the Rococo and Asian culture, as well as drawing inspiration from the history of Château de Lantheuil.
Known for her narrative and sumptuous paintings, Xu weaves together memories of her Chinese heritage, and subsequent curiosity in European art history.
Exploring memories, legacy, and time, Xu Yang’s paintings capture the beauty and ephemerality of a culture. Her reimagined still-life paintings and ceramic sculptures offer the viewer an array of intriguing symbols and narrative clues.
As Xu recently said “In something as intimate as the fingerprints of my mother on a sealed dumpling, I see an entire family and community. In something as delicate as the blue petals of a forget-me-not, I see the precariousness of time. And in something as enduring as gold, I see the power of legacy”.
Xu’s paintings and sculptures feature flowers, insects, animals, dumplings, wigs, frames, gold and porcelain.
They blur the line between old masters and contemporary art, conjuring a dialogue between the East and West. Château de Lantheuil was built in 1613. The Louis XIII landmark was home to French economist Marquis Turgot. The Château houses interior decoration from Louis XV to Louis XVI, 1st Empire and Napoleon III.
Placed within the context of Château de Lantheuil and its collection of portraiture and family heirlooms, Xu’s enigmatic paintings invite viewers to consider what a cultural legacy means today.
Lucy von Goetz, Director of von Goetz & Curator of Forget Me Not, said “We are beyond excited to bring the exceptional work of Xu Yang to Lantheuil for her solo exhibition. Xu’s refined visual language, which merges the East and the West, the historic and the contemporary, the earthly and the surreal, is set to engage audiences in a dialogue with the castle’s storied past and its family art collection. This exhibition sets out our commitment to showcasing the finest artists whose work resonates with the time and setting they inhabit.”
This unique exhibition has been made possible by the kind personal permission of the Turgot family.
