Vitamin Creative Space

“Daisies, A Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems,” Duan Jianyu’s (b. 1970, Zhengzhou, Henan province) first institutional solo exhibition in Beijing and her most comprehensive presentation to date in terms of scope and duration. The exhibition brings together approximately 50 paintings, 5 groups of sculptures, a series of painting installations, and selected works on paper, including several recent works presented for the first time. Anchored in a shift in the artist’s working methods in the mid-2010s, the exhibition traces Duan Jianyu’s key series from the past decade, offering a systematic overview of her sustained exploration of contemporary painting, touching upon aspects including creative language, lived experience, and historical consciousness. “Duan Jianyu: Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems” is curated by UCCA Chief Curator Chelsea Qianxi Liu.

Duan Jianyu is one of the most significant figures in contemporary Chinese painting. Drawing on an open and diverse range of visual resources, she employs light brushwork, a vividly imaginative mode of expression, and a subtly absurd sensibility to deconstruct and reconfigure the complexities of everyday life. Over nearly three decades of practice, she has consistently reflected on the relationship between painting and reality with critical care. Detaching painting from its function of simply representing reality, she continuously recalibrates its narrative intensity, loosens established aesthetic paradigms, and incorporates an awareness of the historical dimensions of painterly practice itself, allowing the medium to become more open-ended and thought-provoking.

Her work is closely attuned to the vitality of culture and the multiplicity of lived experience. It brings images associated with so-called “vernacular culture” together with references to early oil painting traditions in both China and the West, establishing a multi-directional dialogue between different visual experiences. She also addresses the status of women within society, shifting aesthetic and cultural tastes shaped by consumer culture, and the desires and predicaments of contemporary life, while also introducing elements of myth and urban fable to construct a layered, narratively-charged perceptual space.

The exhibition title “Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems” conveys a sensibility shared by the subjects to which Duan Jianyu has long been drawn. “Daisies” and “a light breeze” refer to ordinary yet vital forms of existence, while “No Relatives Writing Poems,” taken from a poem by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, reads as an everyday utterance in which poetry and life quietly converge. Echoing Szymborska’s tone, Duan Jianyu approaches the world with a modest, unpolished, and perceptive sensibility, attuned to subtle details and moments of surprise, revealing the unexpected possibilities of painting in response to contemporary life.

– Excerpted from the foreword to Duan Jianyu: Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems
Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art.