PU JIE

ShanghART Gallery is pleased to organize and host the most anticipated Pu Jie’s solo exhibition Two Different Times, One World, opens on 18^th July to 24^th August 2014. This exhibition showcases 17 artworks by Pu Jie, presenting iconic representations of his juxtaposed memories as an attempt to show the fragmentary, ever-shifting and incoherent nature of life.

‘The backbone of Chinese Contemporary Art is the re-pondering towards Chinese culture with a critical attitude,’ says Pu Jie. Avoiding trappings of both nostalgia and stereotypes, his artworks are based on fragments of memories and experiences, which compose a contemporary narration. Pu Jie’s artworks are images from his mind, the way he thinks and his philosophy; they are typically vivid monochrome of red, yellow, green, and blue with historical and contemporary conception seemingly fused into one visual body. His oeuvres depict a social structure that wavers between China’s past history and its present-day contemporary developments, condensing his unique insights onto his canvases. Pu Jie states, ‘The adoption of a painterly dual visual angle is a partial overlapping of the past and present, East and West, communism and commodity. Such overlapping is filled with cultural mutation and confrontation. It clears up the visual effect and ponders the flowing changes of the Chinese society throughout the past decades.’

Pu Jie (b.1959) lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from Shanghai Normal University, Fine Arts Department in 1986. Pu Jie was educated according to the ideals of proletarian revolution, but later he learnt about the economy of Chinese traits. His personal experience of living through the two different eras led him to feel that his life is a paradox. A close relationship between art and life is extremely evident in his artworks. He is known for his technique of superimposing images, which he calls ‘dual visual angle’; this has emerged from his life experiences instead of exploring an original stylistic character overtime.

Pu Jie’s recent exhibitions include Empire of the Ants, AP Gallery (2013), Space-Time Reconstruction, Ausin Tung Gallery, Hong Kong (2012); Memory and Witness - Pu Jie’s Solo Art Exhibition, Museum at Tamada Projets, Tokyo, Japan (2009); Look Ahead, Look Back - Pu Jie’s Solo Art Exhibition, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2009); Red Hot-Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, U.S.A. (2007); Mahjong-Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2005), City of London Festival, Royal Exchange, London, U.K. (2003), The Dream of the City by the Sea, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, Hamburg, Germany (2003) etc.