PIFO Gallery will present Zhang Jian's solo exhibition Tranquility. It has been ten years since his last solo exhibition in China. This exhibition is curated by Fang Zhiling, presents work from the Daily Scenery series created since 2014.

It was Zhang Jian’s bright, sunlight dappled Yard Scenery series, created between 1994 and 1996, that brought considerable early attention to his work and established his career. Then, in the early 2000s it was his Chang'an Avenue and Houhai series that reinforced his unique position in the Chinese contemporary art world – demonstrating a shift away from the pastoral, idyllic and contemplative scenes to a more urban subject: open places found in city spaces. In a marked change in direction to his work over the last seven years Zhang Jian has been experimenting with expressionistic landscapes to produce his new Daily Scenery series.

This exhibition presents work from the Daily Scenery series created since 2014. Working with a clearly very different set of techniques, these paintings by Zhang Jian are much more abstract and expressionistic than his previous work. Anxious, multi-layered brush strokes and complex colours communicate a feeling more than they attempt to reflect the reality of a scene giving each work a restless energy. While rural and urban scenes still form the main subject for his work, how the artist deals with each painting is remarkably different – from the naive style of simple figuration to the use of a fauvist palette and further to rapid mark-making that could be associated with the action painting of the American Abstract Expressionists – all brought together to capture a unique moment in contemporary Chinese culture.

Exhibition curator Fang Zhiling said: “Zhang Jian’s practice reflects profound individual transformation: Yard Scenery series implies his youthful and innocent personality, the Public Landscape series demonstrates the collision of a solitary individual within a social landscape, the recent Daily Scenery series shows his attention to life and to lives based on social experience”. This transformation not only reflects his self-transcendence but also reflects his critical awareness of the significant transformation of Chinese contemporary art of the last decade. ZHANG Jian Zhang Jian was born in 1968 in Beijing and graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Art in 1993. He lives and works in Beijing. He has had solo shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Korea, Thailand and Germany and has participated in international group shows held in the Asian Art Museum, Louise Blouin Foundation and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum amongst others. His works can be found in the collections of the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; the Guangdong Museum of Art; the Shanghai Art Museum and the Long Museum.

About the exhibition

Exhibition: 27 April – 28 May 2017, 10:00 – 18:00 (Closed on Mondays)

Opening: 14:00 – 18:00, 27 April 2017

Venue: PIFO Gallery

Courtesy of the artist and PIFO Gallery, for further information please visit http://pifo.cn.