Children are a frequent theme in Guo Jin's work, meditations upon pure joy and unadultered idealism. Jumping catches three children at Henri Cartier-Bresson's “decisive moment,” poised in kinetic potential as they jump mid-air against an abstract pink sky. Their rounded bodies possess a convincing heft, but their skin is spackled in red, yellow, peach, and white, a texture that suggests both materiality, like the surface of marble, and the passage of time, like antiqued painted furniture. Are these children real or allegorical? Where are they leaping to and what are they leaping from? Guo Jin's work gives itself to many different readings, but the children's sense of dynamism and joy remains constant.

A word from The Artist

Changes in our lives lead to dreams based on nostalgia, as opposed to a vision for the future. The backwards-looking nature of our ideals causes us to look at them as if they were a beautiful work of art. It is like living in a world intermingled with fantasy and reality. The past becomes our own fairytale, evoking a long-lost feeling of being alive. Although it is brief and illusory, this nostalgia drives people to constantly collect from the past, never realizing the beauty of true idealism.