Concrete Painting

Born in 1970 in Zhengzhou, Henan province, Duan Jianyu graduated from the oil painting department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 1995. She currently teaches at the South China Normal University of the Arts in Guangzhou.

Duan Jianyu’s works recall a boundary that is mentally non-tangible in our daily lives, yet they precisely recall the feeling of living in contemporary China under globalization. Duan Jianyu strives for the most generic subjects matter and she delves into banal expression and style, and very much about life in the present tense. Her painting grows from its proto-concept and outline of different modes of living into a painted reality. Continuously impacted, resisted, altered and formed by the pictures that emerge from different influences, situations and awarenesses, this reality has the same complexity as the material reality before us. Duan Jianyu wanders the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, so-called narrative follows the logic of painting itself, and unknown experiences open up.

Duan Jianyu’s recent selected solo exhibitions include: The Foam of Days, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2022; Automatic Writing - Automatic Understanding, Pond Society, Shanghai; Duan Jianyu Solo Exhibition, Art Basel Basel 2019, Basel, 2019; Sharp, Sharp, Smart, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2016; A Potent Force: Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2013.She has participated in international exhibitions and bienniales, including: One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A, 2018;APT8, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2015; 15 Years Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA), Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2014; Farewell to Post-colonialism - The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2008; China Welcomes You...Desires, Struggles, New Identities, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, 2007; 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2005; Z.O.U. - Zone of Urgency, 50th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2003; P_A_U_S_E, the 4th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, 2002.

She was awarded The Winner of the Best Artist of Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 2010.

Born in 1977 in Kolkata, Liao Guohe graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2001, majoring in mechanical drawing, and currently lives and works in Changsha and Beijing.

One would always immerse in the sense of loss and ignorance when appreciating Liao Guohe’s painting. This cyniscism is used as a critical strategy, fascinating while aesthetically is also a challenge for the audiences. In today’s art ecology, while contemporary art adheres to ideology, the game of exposing and resisting the latter has made people feel tired. Whereas the practice of Liao seems to go behind the game and becomes a more crafty existence than the ideology in disguise. For Liao, the "truth" of painting lies in the ironic process of transcending and reducing its content and form. The representation of Liao in the form of painting may convince the audience of the artist's belief in medium, but the language of his painting destroys the direct message conveyed by the image. Like many of his paintings, Liao challenged the medium in the process of overturning the basic tenets of painting while showing his profound understanding of painting.

Liao Guohe’s recent solo exhibitions include: “Lost People”, Cc Foundation & Art Center, Shanghai (2021); “Mighty Laborer”, SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2021); “Public Painting: APARTMENT BLESS, Genealogy Study of Artists No. 5”, SSSSART Research Centre, Shanghai (2020); “Ten Thousand Houses”, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing (2016); “Satisfaction Guaranteed”, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2014). Selected group exhibitions include: “Duration: Chinese Art in Transformation”, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing (2020); “A Hundred Years of Shame – Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations”, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); “Jing Shen - The act of painting in contemporary China, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan (2015); and La Biennale de Montreal (2016).