ZHU JIA

In each of the paintings, the artist is pictured slightly outside of the main action or frame. While the paintings have the grandeur of history paintings, they present everyday activities of leisure and play, from the celebratory to the mundane.

Made during a time when the artist was living abroad, these paintings come out of the practicalities and necessities of working in a solitary manner, being dependent only on oneself. They also come out of the desire to acknowledge one’s place in the world, despite how transitory or fleeting. The works aim to make concrete a precarious space of being both inside and outside; familiar and foreign; of being part of something, but not quite belonging.

About the Artist

Zhu Jia, born in 1963, Beijing. Graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988. He lives and works in Beijing and London. Selected exhibitions include: Be Together for Today, DRC No. 12, Beijing (2017); Art and Chine after 1989: Theater of the world, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A. (2017); 3rd Bienal de Montevideo 2016, Montevideo, Uruguay (2016); That has Been, and May be Again, Para Site, Hong Kong (2016); Displaying Fragments, Ten Years of OCAT (2005-2015), OCAT, Beijing (2016); Critical Pervasion, Shanghart Gallery & H Space, Shanghai (2015); Mobile M+: Moving Images, Hong Kong (2015) etc.