Ling Jian was born in Shandong Province, China in 1963. He gradu-ated from Tsinghua University Art College, Beijing, and has exhib-ited his work in Germany, Thailand, the Netherlands, Italy, and the USA. Nowadays Ling Jian splits his time between Beijing, Berlin and Hong Kong, three cities that have seen upheavals and vast change in the recent past. His work aims to reconcile a lifetime split between the East and the West。
Ling Jian's Work
While living Vienna, Hamburg and Berlin for many years, Ling Jian always have depicted a changing modern China. His round ambigu-ous, seductive and hyper-realistic portraits of ideal beauties have been widely collected and exhibited. The subjects often are beauti-ful women; reflection on changing modern standards of beauty and cultural identity, as observed on the "Sister Lotus series". This series of watercolours presents a new facet of the artist, allowing the public to immerse itself directly in Ling Jian's true artistic identity and universe. Through the transparency emerging behind the portraits, the artist adds a new layer to the story they tell, revealing the process of the creation itself.
"The process of watercolour is like meditation, which can take you into your own deep world and reveals traces of your heart."- Ling Jian