L.L. Contemporary is pleased to announce its participation in Art Toronto 2025. This will be the gallery’s second consecutive year at the fair, presenting a group exhibition of six artists who have long collaborated with it. Their practices explore a sense of otherness through abstract biophilic and pentimento painting, as well as paper cuttings.

Returning to the fair are recent paintings by Amir Shingray (Sudan born, Toronto based), Jian Liu (China born, Toronto based), and Takuya Inoue (Japan). Shingray’s paint drips act as the tightness and tendrils to the natural environments where his “interlocutors” are enigmatically camouflaged or at a standstill. Liu’s works begin to suffuse the picture plane—perhaps as top and bottom, skyline and reflection—where a single silhouette of a head is “encompassed” by directions borne in the mind, space and time. The enigma and suffusing continue in Tobias Francis’ (UK) paintings, whose titles further compound the phonological—written and visual—questioning how we trust what we see and believe to be.

For Inoue, this inquiry is psychogeography and the effect place—in this case, Canada—has on a person, rendered in delicate, layered applications of shades of color. In contrast are the thickly applied paints of Min Luo (China), whose depictions of flora and fauna “re-form” against traditional notions of Eastern landscapes and painting, while her brushstrokes “re-mark” Abstract Expressionism and painting as the subject of contemporary art.

Finally, Zhan Zhang (China born, Toronto based) cuts and sculpts a taxonomy of amoebic and biologic forms from and tissues—at times whisper-thin and suspended in air. Her most recent exhibition at the gallery was installed along the walls and floor, prompting viewers to be mindful of how we interact with nature—natural, manmade, handmade, and arguably human—emphasizing how much and how little our presence can affect others, and sense of self.

Amir Shingray was born in Sudan and later moved to Turkey. He now lives and works in Toronto. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boğaziçi University in Turkey, where he spent six years working in Prof. Gregg Wolf’s studio.

Shingray takes much of his artistic inspiration from childhood memories in Sudan, incorporating elements of African art and culture into his paintings. His brushstrokes are light and fluid, with bold lines and vibrant, intense colors. These qualities reflect the essence of African art and the vitality of life. Shingray’s work often combines abstraction and representation, encouraging viewers to experience a dynamic balance between despair and hope, while exploring humanity’s potential for both beauty and chaos.

Shingray has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Turkey and Canada, including at the French Cultural Centre Art Gallery in Turkey, the Craig Scott Gallery in Canada, and Galeriastist Lab in Istanbul. In 2022, he was invited to exhibit at the Commegena Biennale in Adıyaman, Turkey. Shingray’s works are part of collections across Canada, Europe, and Africa, housed in both institutional and private collections.

Jian Liu, born in Shanghai in 1961, was accepted into the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Art at the age of eighteen. At twenty-four, he became a lifelong resident artist at the Traditional Chinese Painting Academy of Shanghai, where he worked alongside many masters of Chinese painting. After participating in several exhibitions in France, Germany, and Italy, Liu chose to settle in Canada in 1989. His work is characterized by bold, rough brushstrokes and vibrant colors, heavily influenced by Western abstract artists such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Joseph Beuys. Liu’s art reflects a deep understanding of traditional techniques, creating a dreamlike realm through his skillful brushwork. He blends varying shades of ink with bold colors, emphasizing line to merge traditional and abstract styles. Liu’s works are included in numerous collections, including the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto, the Bank of China in Hong Kong, and the Grand Hyatt Hotels in Taiwan and Beijing.

Min Luo (b. 1968, Luzhou, Sichuan) graduated from Southwest Normal University and later received her MFA from the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Arts. She currently works in Beijing.

Her featured solo and two-person exhibitions include: “Echoes of Home · Elsewhere” – a two-person show with Danwen Xing, 2025 (Chengdu Art Academy); “Diary of Plants,” 9th Art Changsha, 2024 (Changsha Art Museum); “Dreams Beyond the Fences,” 2022 (Shanghai Gallery of Art); “Leisure Amid Flowers,” 2021 (Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy); “The Surviving Poetry,” 2018 (Miguel Marcos Gallery, Barcelona, Spain); “Flowers of Another World,” 2017 (Robinson Cultural Center of Alhaurín de la Torre, Malaga, Spain); and “Mirror of Daily Life,” 2011 (Today Art Museum, Beijing).

Her major group exhibitions include: Jinan International Biennale, 2024, 2022 (Shandong Art Museum); Chengdu Biennale, 2023, 2021 (Chengdu Tianfu Art Museum); “After the Fog, First Flowers: Oriente and Orientalism, from Modernism to Modernity,” 2023 (Casa Vicens by Gaudí, Barcelona, Spain); “New Brocade Ash Pile: A New Perception of Contemporary Painting,” 2021 (Guangdong Museum of Art); and “Ego · Superfluous Things” – Theme Exhibition of the 5th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale, 2020 (Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum).

Takuya Inoue’s (b. 1993, Japan) painting practice is grounded in his encounters with diverse landscapes and people through residencies and site-specific projects. Using both traditional and experimental techniques, Inoue explores how these experiences can be perceived and transformed into works that align with the concept of “universal harmony” (Banbutsu no chowa). Rooted in Japanese aesthetics, this concept points to the interconnectedness of all things. After completing his graduate studies at Tokyo University of the Arts (2021), Inoue has participated in exhibitions and artist residencies across Asia, Europe, and North America, and has received support from multiple Japanese cultural grant programs. Most recently, during a residency at Centre CLARK in Montreal, Canada (2025), he conceived the project “ABC,” which addresses the challenge of coexistence in a culturally homogeneous society like Japan. Since then, he has been developing a new series of paintings centered on dialogue and collaboration, signaling a shift from a purely subjective approach to one that embraces a more open and relational mode of perception.

Paintings of Tobias Francis are often small-scale and uniform in size. This is a deliberate choice for a conscious approach to limitation, which paradoxically liberates and allows him to play with compositional trickery and visual artifice, creating a space where wordplay and paint are lyrically employed. His works can be seen as puzzles, to which he in his own words adds: “When I paint, I reconcile both the trickster and straight shooter in me. I’m drawn to the slipperiness of paint (like language) to elucidate and veil, and question how withholding information can inform more, not less.”

Francis (b. 1998, UK) lives and works in London. He gained his BA in Painting from the University of Edinburgh in 2021 and his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2024. His recent solo exhibition “Weathervane” was held at AYE Gallery, Beijing. Selected group exhibitions include Pusher Gallery (London, 2025); L.L. Contemporary (Canada, 2024); Hew Hood Gallery (London, 2024); and Arusha Gallery (London, 2024). His works are included in the permanent collection of the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

Zhan Zhang is a Toronto-based visual artist known for her soft sculptures and paper art animations, which possess a fragile and otherworldly quality. In the same way of “line drawing”, paper cutting is broken into the smallest unit in the medium – the cuts – an attempt to place this often-dismissed form and material in a broader cultural context, re-imagine the function of tactile practices in the contemporary environment of information overload and collective memories.

In Zhang’s art, valid reality is sincerely replaced with strange combinations of objects and events. Inanimate and animate things assume similar characters through convergence. The distorted forms embody delicacy and precision, put viewers inside a moment to experience the dreams and unconscious, the loneliness and confusion, and the divinity in a single glance, and question the reality surrounding us.

Zhang graduated with an Honours B.A., double majoring in Visual Arts and Arts Management, from the University of Toronto, and followed with graduate studies in 3D Animation at Seneca College.