Art+ Shanghai Gallery is proud to present a duo solo exhibition by two Chinese female artists: Bao Lei & Jiang Yifan.

In Bao Lei visions, the subjects are wandering: the silhouettes, inconsistent, emptied by dint of visual and virtual consumption, but the objects are also like this. They are present but have become useless because they have been abandoned ("Seats available1", Bao Lei, 2020). They confirm a void, a latent absence. 

Each work embodies a moment of change: the moment when everything becomes nothing. Build your own emotions when time is constantly slipping away? "My memory of a certain time in the past is fading... and at the same time, when I try to remember a certain time, it doesn't come back to me in a linear, temporal order but in an assembly of significant moments that characterize this period, as if the other, more ordinary part had disappeared..."

Social networks have plunged life into a constant present. The past no longer exists. The watercolor technique has become the epitome of this attempt to hold on to time: a technique in which the spots, the elements, are diluted, overflowed, and are fixed very quickly. In this manner Bao Lei can freeze this blur and invent scenes "from thin air", unite fragments and vague images... Scenes that are so familiar, yet from which this famous " awkwardness " emerges ("Evening Party", Bao Lei, 2020). Visions of everyday life that make the viewer feel uneasy, without being able to know exactly why. "Something' is disturbing the scene. The nocturnal aspect accentuates this anxiety, the lighting generates an effect of speed, like combined flashes, which contribute to destabilizing the spectator's vision. Speed and flow both pushed to the extreme, drive Bao Lei's work. The speed of the internet flux, its ephemeral aspect, but also the speed of movement, which prevents any reflection: we are gesturing in a society of action, where wandering, philosophy and reverie are now consigned to the background... 

In Jiang Yifan works, a delicate and contemporary breath of air passes through these characteristic landscapes, representing an artistic tradition that goes back for thousands of years, from the Song and Yuan dynasties, and carries them back all the way to us.  

The classical elements that constitute them embody common reference points, but a new vision reshapes their lines, forms, and proportions, and as a result conjures up mysterious scenes.

Inspired by traditional Chinese painting, Jiang Yifan builds a personal theatre. From classical scenes, she transports us into a secret world, tinged with poetry, and often bordering on the surreal. By using the natural elements, so inseparable from traditional Chinese painting - the mountains, the rivers, the sea - the artist shows her desire to evolve in a framework which is attached to the past, to her own culture. "My in-depth study of Chinese art at university has influenced my artistic style. When I looked at these ancient works, explored these mountains and rivers, these temples, with artists who came before me, a different way of combining them came to mind. " 

Nature, through work, is pared down. With Jiang Yifan's brushstrokes, the lines simplify, curve and soften... The details are smoothed over, until all traces of change are erased. But the artist is not content with revisiting these totems of the past, she also introduces into the middle of her scenes, incongruous elements - chairs and microphones placed on the sea, for example - which create absurd sequences, on the edge of dreams. The proportions make a mockery of reality... The characters are reminiscent of the style of the Colombian painter Fernando Botero, with their round and voluptuous forms and their lack of feeling.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Bao Lei was born in 1979 in Guangyuan, Sichuan province China. Upon her graduation and post-graduation from  Sichuan Fine Art Institute (SFAI) She has worked at SFAI as a teacher and since 2019 Working as a Dean of Water color Department of Art Education School at SFAI.

Her education and professional career have been firmly rooted in Sichuan. She is frequently exhibited with her Sichuan-based contemporaries, and together with them, she is recognized as one of the more important artist of  Sichuan School Painting. 

Throughout her almost 20-year-career as a professional artist, her exhibitions were notably held at Chongqing Xinghui Contemporary Art Museum("Leaping on Paper"), National Art Museum of China, Beijing ("Era Texture”), Salon 8 Art Space, Hamburg, Germany, Contemporary Female Artists Biennale”, Hebei Jiaxiang Anshan Art Museum, Chongqing, Today Art Museum, Beijing, “Four Artists in Düsseldorf", Stadtverwaltung Düsseldorf, Kulturamt Künstlerförderung (Düsseldorf), the 3rd Guiyang Biennale, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen and McDonald Stewart Art Centre, Canada, among others. 

Bao Lei  is the recipient of several awards including the Excellence Award by Xi'an The 4th National Women's Watercolor-Pastel Exhibition, Second Prize by Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition.

In her latest’s works, the artist confounds her memory: the one from her own existence and the unconscious one of her gaze, which catches, non-stop, the images from a continuous flow of information, especially on the internet. Her works results from the "collage" of these fragments, raw or already altered by the unconscious play of memory. Together in the same space, they constitute a new universe...

Born in Xinjiang, China in 1992, Jiang Yifan began to pursue her artistic career in Beijing where she graduated from the Art College of Renmin University of China. She has also obtained his Master’s degree from the same university. She works and lives in Beijing.

Jiang Yifan work;s have been exhibited in China. Notable exhibitions include a solo show “Monodrama” Jiang Yifan Solo Exhibition, Mountain Art Beijing & Frank Lin Art Center, Beijing and group shows as “Yu”, Art Museum of Renmin University of China, Beijing,  Art Nova 100 artist, Guardian Art Center, Beijing and Transboundary Ink and Water, Art Museum of Renmin University of China, Beijing among others.

The space beyond the frame is central to Jiang Yifan's work. Like a show, her painting is in movement, and carries an echo far beyond itself... The technique chosen by the artist reinforces its " hectic ", living aspect. The silk, its slippery, elusive aspect, vibrates at the slightest rustle of air... The spectator's body is involved, since a strong desire to pull aside the painted curtain brings them to the unveiled work, to the story that is unfolding. What is that woman looking at in the far distance, perched on her horse? Where are the singers that the chairs seem to be waiting for? Is the event taking place somewhere else?

PRESS RELEASE DIGITAL CATALOG

RECOMMEND