Exhibition - Sin Jin Yuan: "Dolls"

Fu Zi Tang Gallery, North of Long March, 798 Art Zone

2007 August 25 - September 26

On Sunday, I attended the vernissage of an exhibition at the 798 Art Zone featuring works by Su Jin Yuan (his blog can be found here), a fresh graduate from China's Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Su Jin Yuan was born in Fujian; after graduating from the School for Arts and Crafts in his native city in 2002, he continued his studies at the Academy in Beijing. "Dolls" is his first single exhibition. The works displayed at this show are definetely more than appropriate for a debut exhibition at the beginning of a great career in art.

The exhibition is named after the different sized figurines he produces. The sculptures are very expressive, but difficult to describe. Although "Dolls" was advertised as a sculptural show, there were indeed some mixed technique paintings as well.
The works were very much after my fancy: traditional material mixed with today's influence. The tendency of Su Jin Yuan's works is more towards applied arts than toward fine arts, maybe this is a consequence of his former studies in Fujian. I think this is the right direction of contemporary art: focus on the technique, on the way of painting, on objective beauty.

It is sad that we don't know more of that kind of Chinese contemporary art in Europe.
Seeing Su Jun Yuan's works fills me with hope, because his paintings and sculptures show that Chinese contemporary art is not lost.