Leo Xu

35 | Founder and Director, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai, China

‘We are selling ideas rather than sculptures or objects,’ Leo Xu has said. His Shanghai-based contemporary art gallery, founded in 2011, focuses on young artists from or living in China, and has built a reputation for its innovative approach – for fostering links between art and urbanism, architecture and cinema, for example, and for staging ambitious offsite projects. Previously, Xu was the associate director at James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai (2009–11) and director of Chambers Fine Art in Beijing (2007–09); he has curated many exhibitions and continues to write art criticism for a wide range of publications.

See more 40 Under 40 Global Business