Biography
Born in 1970 in Zhengzhou, Henan province, Duan Jianyu graduated from the oil painting department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 1995. She currently teaches at the South China Normal University of the Arts in Guangzhou.
Duan Jianyu’s works recall a boundary that is mentally non-tangible in our daily lives, yet they precisely recall the feeling of living in contemporary China under globalization. Duan Jianyu strives for the most generic subjects matter and she delves into banal expression and style, and very much about life in the present tense. Her painting grows from its proto-concept and outline of different modes of living into a painted reality. Continuously impacted, resisted, altered and formed by the pictures that emerge from different influences, situations and awarenesses, this reality has the same complexity as the material reality before us. Duan Jianyu wanders the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, so-called narrative follows the logic of painting itself, and unknown experiences open up.
Duan Jianyu’s recent selected solo exhibitions include: Automatic Writing - Automatic Understanding, Pond Society, Shanghai; Duan Jianyu Solo Exhibition, Art Basel Basel 2019, Basel, 2019; Sharp, Sharp, Smart, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2016; A Potent Force: Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2013. She has participated in international exhibitions and bienniales, including: One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A, 2018; APT8, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2015; 15 Years Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA), Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2014; Farewell to Post-colonialism - The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2008; China Welcomes You...Desires, Struggles, New Identities, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, 2007; 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2005; Z.O.U. - Zone of Urgency, 50th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2003; P_A_U_S_E, the 4th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, 2002.
She was awarded The Winner of the Best Artist of Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 2010.
