DUAN JIANYU
Duan Jianyu’s large-scale paintings present incongruous scenarios drawing on a wide range of sources from European art history, classical Chinese painting, and imagery of traditional rural life. Executed in a naïve style that belies significant painterly skill. Duan has also created multi-media installations, artist’s books, photographs, and ink paintings on cardboard. In her work, European nudes, Chinese landscapes, chickens, watermelons and air hostesses come together to explore with wry humour the clashes between urban and rural, tradition and modernity in a society undergoing enormous change.
“I love secretly describing the details of life, apparently rationally and politely, calming them with fakes, falsities and untruths.” In a cheerful mixture of folk culture triviality and art-historical references, the artist sketches a world that is adrift and contains people's struggle with their identity in the disorienting process of continual migration between urban and rural environments, between nature and culture, and between East and West.
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