By Xiao Dong

An art exhibition of works by more than 10 Chinese artists, including oils, engravings, traditional Chinese paintings, sculpture, art installations and performance art was recently held in Beijing. The most eminent of these artists have a solid background in fine arts, to which the distinctive character of their work, seen in prestigious museums and private collections, bears witness. They are Zhou Jirong, Tan Ping, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Su Xinping, Lu Peng and Yang Mian.

Lu Peng

Born in Beijing and a graduate of the Capital Normal University Fine Arts Department, Lu Peng has staged several personal and cooperative art exhibitions in Boston, London and Beijing. The color red is predominant in his works as it is in traditional Chinese paintings, where it signifies exuberance and good luck. His New Year paintings and those celebrating Tibetan Buddhism reflect Lu Peng’s essential Chineseness.

Yang Mian

Young painter Yang Mian is deeply impressed with the power of consumption culture. His profound contemplation of fashion leads him to positive depictions of China’s transforming society emerging from long-standing stagnation.

Wang Yuping

The tremendous vitality of Wang Yuping’s works, in which his inner world is projected in a brilliantly analytical perspective, is what most captivates his audience.

Shen Ling

Shen Ling is a graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Art aficionados are transfixed by the vivid manner in which her oil paintings evince her obvious burning passion for life. Free and sensuous, sentimental and lyrical – her works captivatingly commingle the earthly and spiritual.

Zhou Jirong

Zhou Jirong is from Tongren, Guizhou Province. He depicts contemporary and historical scenarios of Beijing as seen through his eyes, visualized in his consciousness and sensed through his artistic instinct. His gray old hutong, dilapidated red walls, and rusty green gates, still as death, are juxtaposed against a colorfully chaotic contemporary urban scenario Deep thought and concern for humanity are implicit in his works.

Su Xinping

Su Xinping’s contemporary engravings both challenge and dispute this traditional Chinese craft. His advocacy of contemporary theories is apparent in his stress on plurality and imprint – the essential beauty of printing. His emphasis is on a rationalized spirituality and workaday conventional life.