Yan Heng and Shen Dapeng are post-80’s artists, after graduating from their respective art academies, they both chose painting to be their life-time careers. They have highly acclaimed academic backgrounds, their skills shown through excellent foundations in realistic and expressive painting abilities stands out among post-80’s artist, their rich imagination and spirit of independent thought gives their artworks a sense of attentiveness to reality and at the same time, allows them to break away from the cliché of the iconic, borrowing and the symbolic of their predecessors which results in the lacking of emotions and sensibilities. Thus the elegant images filled with strange imaginations are created which rings with the deepest sensitivities of its viewers.            

Artists of this generation care little about ideology, instead they devote their creativity to the expression of their inert emotions and feelings. Being one of them, Yan Heng graduated from No.3 Studio, Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art. His artworks touches upon the reality in which the society is observed from the perception of the youths where the icons of imagination and the reality are interwoven, where the desires and secrets of the youths too are the overall groundings, creating lively and strange images of realism but in an manner of expressionism.

Shen Dapeng’s artworks reflect more of his psychological activities, he uses highly detailed and representational methods in the portrayal of people and the environments around him. More surrealistic than representational, his style is the perfect merge of the hyper-realistic and the cartoon/comic. Looking at his artworks is like a voyage through the dreamscape of the artist filled with colours and forms.    

About the Artists:

Yan Heng was born in Liaoning in 1982, he graduated from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art in 2007, he is now working and living in Beijing.

Shen Dapeng was born in Liaoning in 1983, he graduated from Tianjin Academy of Fine Art in 2006, he is now working and living in Dalian.