Materials of the future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art From 1980-1990

Deng Jianjin 2007-08-01
Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts

Conducted in Cantonese

“[At the time] the transition (from classical art to modern art) was not that clear to me. Perhaps it was because I was leafing through all kinds of books about painting in a pretty random fashion. It’s hard for me to say that I was looking at one kind of work. Back then, I wanted to find some sort of schematic, a symbol for the things I wished to express, which I could find in books. Another influence wasn’t books, however, but rather magazines—lots of foreign magazines and images that were unrelated to painting. Some of these were pornographic. So you see, it was not necessarily just styles from the art books that influenced me.”

Biography:

Deng Jianjin (b. 1961, Guangdong) is an Associate Professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1986, Deng graduated from the Art Department of Jingdezhen Ceramic College in Jiangxi Province, and then started to teach at the Department of Oil Painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Together with Li Zhengtian and Yang Yao, among others, he was a member of 105 Studio, a group that encouraged experiments in oil painting.

Deng’s work has been exhibited widely. His earliest shows include the ‘Art Exhibition of Deng Jianjin’ (Guangzhou Xinghe Exhibition Centre, 1988), as well as three exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China: the seventh ‘National Art Exhibition’ (1989), the second ‘Documentary Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Art’ (1994) and the second ‘Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition’ (1994).

Deng Jianjin 2007-08-01 Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts

Deng Jianjin 2007-08-01
Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts