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ARARIO GALLERY is pleased to announce the opening of Jing Shijian | The Snail's Universe and Playful Landscape on May 26, 2018. The exhibition will present Jing Shijian's The Snail's Universe and Playful Landscape series through his latest paintings and sculptures. In this stage of Jing’s creation, the artist has gone beyond his previous creative approach into a completely new art world of his own. Jing Shijian’s creation is always full of vitality. By utilizing surrealist techniques to depict mysterious illusions with realist implications, such as landscapes, characters, animals, mirrors, double images and so on. Blending realism, modernism, surrealism, and even magical realism, combining real objects with metaphors or symbolic meanings, eventually the different schools of art and the various creative approaches have been united in the work of Jing Shijian, forming the representative character of his art and his creative vitality.

As a continuation of Jing Shijian's creating system, he has created a unique landscape and built up a different view of space and time. In this particular landscape, time is invariable, space can be overlaid, the reality and imaginary can exist simultaneously. Furthermore, the human and nature consist a drama that full of conflicts, while the tragedy and comedy of human nature is between the bantering and bantered, heading to the deepest feeling of alienated and lonely. The main focus of the exhibited works is painting which consist of landscapes and characters. However, being different from the previous works, the landscapes and characters in Jing’s new creation appear with a kind of tense and the inner conflict. The familiar scenes of landscapes and characters has been scenarized with different kinds of narration that created different sense of feelings—sometimes solemn, sometimes dramatic, and sometimes timeliness. The supernatural visual images enter into the picture and add the absurd or inconsistent factors into the picture, which make the creation look like either metamorphosed element or the true nature of daily life. In the end, all of these combine together and construct a brand-new art world that belongs to Jing Shijian.

In this new world of art, the artist selects snails and landscapes as important symbols. In the era of rapid development, expectation is accompanied by anxiety, uneasiness, and even a kind of arrogance that floods the entire world. The artist treats snails as a fairy tale that has been ignored or described, forming its own fairy tale issue. At the same time, it is also acting as a continuation of human life. In this era, the playful landscape becomes an important place in the greater scope of the world, offering unprecedented discovery. Between the bantering and the bantered, the nature of the universe witnesses all the human’s landscape just like the snail constantly views all the vicissitudes of human being. It makes a mock of the claim that human boasts about the described landscape is becoming the cosmopolitan landscape. In the snail’s universe and the playful landscape, the micro and the macro become the most fundamental elements. The plots and stories take place in the process of bantering and bantered. For this reason, we have begun our ultimate questioning through the meditation in the snail’s universe.

About the Artist

Jing Shijian

1960   Born in Shenyang, China

Lives and works in Hangzhou, China

Works as the professor and the Assistant Dean of painting art academy of Chinese Academy of Fine Arts

Selection Solo Exhibitions

2018   The Snail's Universe and the Playful Landscape ⎼ Arario Gallery, Shanghai, China

2017   1/2 Jing Shijian’s Solo Exhibition ⎼ Hangzhou Renke Art Gallery, Hangzhou, China

2016   Sense and Sensibility Ten Artists’Exhibition for Contemporary Art ⎼ Shanghai                     Zhangjiang Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, China

2015   Force 12 hurricane Invitational Exhibition of MING gathering ⎼ MINGYUAN Art                 Center, Shanghai, China

           Art Historical Flashbacks Another Path in Chinese Contemporary Group                             Exhibition ⎼ ELION Art Gallery, Beijing, China

2014   Domestication——Jing ShiJian Sole Exhibition ⎼ Dresden,  Germany

2012   Huai•su the paper works Exhibition ⎼ ShangHai Art fair, Shanghai, China

2009   Rowing a Boat——The Art of Jing Shijian ⎼ ZhangJiang-Art Center, Shanghai

2009   The possibility of reading——Frozen 2009 seconds ⎼ Action Art, Hangzhou, China

2008   The possibility of reading——Frozen 2008 seconds ⎼ Action Art, Beijing, China

2006   Geography of Art——Jing ShiJian Sole Exhibition ⎼ National Museum of Fine                    Arts, Beijing, China

            Roaming In The World——Jing ShiJian Sole Exhibition ⎼ Shanghai Art Museum,                Shanghai, China

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016     Sense & Sensibility 10 Contemporary Artists

2015     Force 12 Hurricane —— Ming Distinguished Assembly ⎼ Mingyuan Art Museum,               Shanghai, China

             Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art ⎼ LOS ANGELES ART SHOW, Los                         Angeles, USA

              Garden Splendors——Chinese Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition ⎼ Jinji                  Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, China

              2014 Ancient Heritage : A Contemporary Historical Path by the West Lake ⎼                      SanShang Art, Hangzhou, China

              In the Name of Nature – An Exhibition on Landscape Painting ⎼ Art Museum of                Nanjing Art University, Nanjing, China

              Incorporeal Shape —— International Contemporary Art Exhibition ⎼ Museum of                contemporary art Beijing, Beijing, China

2013      Portrait of the times--30 Years of Contemporary Art ⎼ Power Station of Art,                        Shanghai, China

              China Oil Painting Language Research Exhibition ⎼ Dadu Museum of Art, Beijing

2012      In time--2012 China oil painting Biennial ⎼ National Museum of Fine Arts,                          Beijing, China

              Incorporeal Shape —— Chinese Contemporary Art Collection ⎼ Kunstwerk                        Büdelsdorf  Carlshütte, Büdelsdorf, Germany

              Dreaming of the South —— Chinese Contemporary Art Collection ⎼ Fanhua Art                Exhibition Center, Shanghai, China

2012      China Oil Painting Art Exhibition ⎼ Olympia West Hall, London, UK

2010      Reshaping History —— 2000 ~ 2009 Chinese New Art ⎼ The National                                Conference Center of Beijing , Beijing, China

2009      China Narratives —— Chengdu Biennial,  Chengdu International Exhibition                      Center, Sichuan Chengdu, China

              Constellations—798 Biennial ⎼ 798, Beijing, China

2008       Live classical Chinese garden: From fantasy to reality, Dresden, Germany

               Immigrate City —— Shanghai International Biennial ⎼ Shanghai Art Museum,                     Shanghai, China

               China New Vision: Chinese Contemporary Art Collection  ⎼ Shanghai Art                           Museum , Modern and Contemporary Art Center of La Spezia,La Spezia, Italy

2005       Beijing International Biennial ⎼ China National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing

               Chengdu Biennial ⎼ Chengdu Modern Art Museum, Sichuan Chengdu, China

               History of River —— The Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition in New Era ⎼ National                 Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, China