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THEME: RED

A toothy grin and great googly eyes. A child smiles at you, and the aviator's cap on her head is both absurd and whimsical, a joke the child knowingly shares with you the observer. Children are a frequent theme in Guo Jin's work, meditations upon pure joy and unadultered idealism. But against the context of modern China, the commentary takes on deeper, critical tones, asking if society's innocence has been lost or if naivety remains; if our worldview is youthful with its eyes full of opportunity, or blinded and obscurded by play-acting and make-believe.

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  • Portrait of a Child
  • Guo Jin (b. 1964) was born in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, and attended the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, graduating from the oil painting department in 1990. His paintings frequently take children as his subject matter in a juxtaposition of youth with China's own development, and idealism lost. After graduating in the early '90s, he showed modestly within China, significantly in Guangzhou Biennale's 1992 oil painting exhibition, in which many of his Sichuan peers also showed works. Since then, as art institutions and infrastructure have grown within China, he has participated in an increasing number of shows, often with his brother, the artist Guo Wei. His bold use of color and skill at creating silk-screen-like texture in oil have garnered him the attention of many gallerists and collectors. He lives and works in Chongqing and Beijing.

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    GUO Jin 郭晋
$35.00
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.

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  • Jumping No. 5
  • Guo Jin (b. 1964) was born in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, and attended the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, graduating from the oil painting department in 1990. His paintings frequently take children as his subject matter in a juxtaposition of youth with China's own development, and idealism lost. After graduating in the early '90s, he showed modestly within China, significantly in Guangzhou Biennale's 1992 oil painting exhibition, in which many of his Sichuan peers also showed works. Since then, as art institutions and infrastructure have grown within China, he has participated in an increasing number of shows, often with his brother, the artist Guo Wei. His bold use of color and skill at creating silk-screen-like texture in oil have garnered him the attention of many gallerists and collectors. He lives and works in Chongqing and Beijing.

    Click on the artist's name for more information
    GUO Jin 郭晋
$35.00
Do you remember your classroom blackboard? Chen Jiao takes us back to our first years of school: a glimpse into the world of language and letters, equations and charts. With layers of colorful accents, the childlike trees and found paper, she refers to her own childhood in southern China. The grey wash over the board mimics the grey sky of her industrial town; the trees evoke the trails where she discovered new pathways on long walks. The characters on the board remind the students of their post-Cultural Revolution identities as coexisting workers, yet the yellow chart creates a rating system for a spectrum of students. It is the paradox of Chinese education: how do you distinguish yourself when you must also live as one small part to a whole? No matter where you are from, Blackboard – Jintang Middle School, by Chen Jiao touches on the universalism of learning and its ability to shape both a society’s and child’s memories.

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  • Blackboard-Jintang Middle School
  • Chen Jiao (b. 1983) was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and attended the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, graduating from the oil painting department in 2006. After staying on for a Master's degree at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chen left the country for a residence scholarship at the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral in Germany, followed by an art exchange at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. Chen's Chinese and European pedigree has served her well, and she is widely exhibited within China. Her works are often nostalgic, recreating the industrial surroundings of her childhood in ghost-like architectural sketches. Other works are abstracted paintings of natural surroundings, paintings that seem to equally mix the subjects of traditional Chinese landscape with the power of abstract expressionism. To Chen, both approaches are means of exploring the spiritual essence of an object, exploring the mixed significations and emotional registers as they exist in her mind.

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    CHEN Jiao 陈皎
$35.00

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