Since the end of the 1970s, Chinese Contemporary Art has experienced 30 years of development of trials and hardships. From “85 New Wave” in the 1980s, international recognition in the 1990s, commercial success in the 2000s to today’s overall prosperity, Chinese contemporary art as a newly arising cultural form has been recognized generally by the domestic and the international, the private and the official. However, 30 Years of development of contemporary art also reflects that China and Chinese have experienced huge changes during the special times. No matter China’s integral economics and culture, or Chinese people’s self cognition and social involvement, all these could be reflected by artists’ works over these years. We hope that this exhibition could act as an entry point to generally define "portrait", not only show paintings on the theme of "portrait", but also present body-oriented works integrating sculpture, installation, video, photography, performance, and etc, demonstrate the significance of the theme at different levels in diversified ways, and make available the possibility of multi-faceted interpretation to the audience.

The exhibition will take the display of visual arts as the main clue, combine it with assortment of the domains of parallel culture and subculture, such as literature, film, drama, music, and etc, panoramically manifest the development course of Chinese contemporary art since the reform and opening up for more than 30 years, and cordially and rationally describe the transformation of the mental appearance of the Chinese people.

The theme of exhibition is Portrait of the Times - 30 Years of Contemporary Art, will open on August 17, 2013, and last for three months. This exhibition features about 115 artists (groups), and about 300 arts works.

*image (left)
The Report of Existence Experience, 2013
painting, integrated materials, 200x400cm
©Liu Manwen

Courtesy of Power Station of Art