Founder, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai, China
Leo Xu Projects is more like a creative agency or laboratory for art than a traditional gallery; founder Leo Xu is a writer and curator based in Shanghai, who collaborates with his artists on projects designed to ‘fit into the city’, rather than artworks that simply await prospective buyers in a showroom. After working as founding director at Chambers Fine Art’s Beijing outpost and as an associate director of James Cohan Gallery in Shanghai, Xu founded his eponymous gallery in 2011, and has since seen his artists participate in many major museum exhibitions and biennials, as well as introducing works by Danh Vo¯, Wolfgang Tillmans and others to a Chinese audience for the first time.