Three Chinese lauded for contemporary art

"Pak's art is almost invisible, almost impossible to document, but manages to explore the human condition in all its complexities and with loving precision," comments judge Nittve, director of M+ Museum of Visual Arts in Hong Kong.

"As an artist who has matured in terms of methodology, he focuses on the realities of everyday life, revealing the uniqueness that enables the exploration of its uncharted potentialities. Consequently, these potentialities of everyday life, suppressed by the grand narratives of modernity, become the center of artistic expression and assume new meanings," continues judge Feng, independent curator and art critic.

The Best Young Artist (no older than 30) went to 26-year-old artist Yan Xing. His works encompass a wide range of creative media, such as performance, video and written words.

"From Daddy, his earliest work dealing with how he grew up in a single-parent family, Yan has evolved a style that blends personal experience and self-illusion with cultural reading, which trapped the audience in a kind of inexplicable skepticism about truth," comments judge Li, multimedia artist and curator.

"Yan's descriptions about social subcultures create a contrast between the content's absurdity and the describer's confidence, which makes it hard to tell the true from the false according to what we see and hear," adds judge Dercon, director of Tate Modern, London.

The jury gave Lifetime Contribution award to Geng Jianyi, who has been a practitioner of Chinese contemporary art for nearly 30 years, and is considered "the most undervalued artist on the contemporary art scene in China".

His works, from the best-known baldhead painting The Second Situation in the 1980s to the large-scale installation Useless after 2000, were featured in his first retrospective exhibition in September.

"Geng has moved beyond the limits of his times in many ways, confronting different historical and social orders and exploring the nature of subjectivity through diverse media, materials and techniques," says judge Huang Zhuan, director of OCT Contemporary Art Center in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

zhangzixuan@chinadaily.com.cn