Biography:

Chen Tong (b. 1962, Hunan Province) is an artist and founder of Borges Libreria and Borges Libreria Institute for Contemporary Art in Guangzhou.

From 1979 to 1983, Chen studied Chinese painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He became a teacher in its Department of Chinese Painting in 1986, where he still teaches today. In 1994, Chen founded the Borges Libreria bookstore, which has become one of the most important venues for contemporary art in Guangzhou, and in 2007, he established the Borges Libreria Institute for Contemporary Art.

Chen has been an important publisher of texts on cultural studies. In 1992, he published the Experimental Art book series, which introduced the art community to a range of titles on contemporary art, cinema, photography and theory. Following this in 1998, Chen and Lu Yi organized the publication series Midnight, which presented and translated books published by Paris Edition de Minuit, in particular, the French nouveau roman. His own publications include My Own World: Art and Life in France (2002), A Sketch: An Aesthetic Way to View Life (2003) and Manet’s Railway (2005).