Beijing Exhibitions>> Blue House Artists

For its spring exhibition Chinese Contemporary is presenting Blue House Artists, a group show centered on the works of five Sichuan based artists: Chen Qiulin, Wu Jianjun, Zhao Nengzhi, Zhou Chunya and Guo Wei,

The Blue House in the title refers to the color of the roof of an old factory compound located on the outskirts of Chengdu the artists have converted into their studios and where they have been working and living since 2002. Since?its renovation the Blue House has become far more than a place to work: it has become an art community, a shelter for people sharing the same life style and pursuing the same goals, as well as a colony where the artworks themselves act as a platform for dialogue and confrontation among artists working with different media. The present exhibition is aimed at catching a glimpse of the vibrant atmosphere the artists have been able to create at the Blue House along with showing these artists' ability to look more deeply into reality, redefining it and fostering with it a mutual dialogue.

Despite her young age, CHEN QIULIN is an artist who has been working and experimenting with a wide range of media: photography, performance, and installation. Many of her works focus on the redefinition of a human being's identity and his role in today's society- sometimes it's the feminine sphere to be taken into consideration in relationship with the outside world. In her recent works, which are shown on this occasion for the first time in Beijing along with an installation realized specifically for the gallery space, Chen Qiulin uses tofu, something Chinese people have always been accustomed with, in order to create unusual installations, thus attempting to reconsider our definitions of what is real and what is not.

WU JIANJUN's fluorescent oil paintings show a human being reduced to a mass of bones, imploded into himself and caught in his most intimate and extreme feelings. Moved and fascinated by nothing but the human being in his essence, the artist recreates onto the canvas his psychological turmoil, gives vent to a wide variety of feelings thus capturing all the facets of the inner life of a person.

ZHAO NENGZHI's works focus on human beings literally exploding. The artist strengthens the emotional tension conveyed by a person's face- a constant theme in Zhao's artistic production since the early Nineties and which has resulted in the series Facial Expressions- by letting it undergo a deconstruction process through the use of bold brushstrokes. His works never aim at reconstructing the physical appearance of a person; on the contrary they want to catch a fragment of a personality.

The works of ZHOU CHUNYA explore different aspects of everyday life, the artist's relationship with what surrounds him -the series depicting his German Shepard has made him famous worldwide- along with topics related to the spirit of nature - rocks proving Zhou's interest in Chinese landscape painting. Through his use of color and loose way of painting reminiscent of the traditional style the artist is able to go beyond the triviality of reality, sublimating it and at the same time capturing its real essence.

GUO WEI's works analyze the relationship between reality and human beings by capturing a moment of the flowing of life, quotidian and irrelevant details. His works have often portrayed children, their vitality and their spontaneous approach to life, their efforts to act like adults despite their being not yet at that stage.
In the present exhibition works created in a peripheral factory compound in Sichuan travel to another factory compound which on the other hand has already become one of the most active centers for Chinese art. The exhibition Blue House artists embodies the spirit of a community visiting another one and wishing to build a mutual understanding and dialogue.