Young artists question frail personal relations in modern world

Zhu Peihong shows his abstract series of paintings, My Space, at the ongoing third edition of Parkview Green Art's group project, Xun-Xun. [Photo/China Daily]

Compared with their predecessors from the 1990s, young artists in China today enjoy much greater exposure. They exhibit more, at museums, galleries and art fairs both at home and abroad. Many of them even start to make money from their work while still in college.

But Zhao Wenjiao, a curator in Beijing, says artists face more competition today than before as their artworks need to evolve and resonate with audiences and critics for them to stay on the market.

Zhao is behind an ongoing exhibition titled Grasping the Normality Within the Abnormality in Beijing's 798 art compound that showcases the paintings and installations by 16 artists who are in their 20s and 30s. The pieces show the diversity of their approaches and reveal a development in thought that will promote them to a higher level of creativity, she says.

The exhibition is the third edition of Parkview Green Art's group project, Xun-Xun, which serves as a launch pad for upcoming artists. Xun xun in Chinese means "progressing smoothly and in an orderly fashion", and the project aims to offer a glimpse into the future of contemporary Chinese art.

Zhao says the featured artists can be grouped into three sections, based on their approaches to life experiences.

Zhu Peihong, for instance, builds up a world in his work by taking unrelated segments from real life and putting them together. In his abstract series My Space, the 30-year-old Shanghai-born artist hopes to relieve the anxieties that people suffer. He has a master's degree in lithography from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the capital.