Selected Works
1990’s
Duan Jianyu
8 1/3
1998
Oil on canvas
110 × 160 cm
Duan Jianyu
93 4/4
1998
Oil on canvas
140 × 180 cm
Duan Jianyu
Hey, Hello, Hi No.1
2000
Oil on canvas
170 × 110 cm
Duan Jianyu
Hey, Hello, Hi No.10
1999
Oil and silk screen on canvas
140 × 180 cm
2000’s
Duan Jianyu
Guide to Life No.2: Home Decoration
2001
Oil on canvas
35 × 50 cm
Duan Jianyu
Schnable, Vulgar Scenery of China No.1
2002
Combine painting: oil and plates on canvas
160 × 180 cm
Duan Jianyu
Art Chicken No.5
2003
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Art Chicken No.11
2004
Oil on canvas
120 × 120 cm
Duan Jianyu
Art Chicken No.12
2004
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sister No.4
2005
Oil on canvas
190 × 210 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sister No.15
2008
Oil on canvas
181 × 434 cm
Duan Jianyu
Goodgood morning No.4
2006
Oil and silk screen on canvas
120 × 120 cm
Duan Jianyu
Goodgood morning No.5
2006
Oil on canvas
110 × 170 cm
Duan Jianyu
GOing hOme NO.1
2009
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
A Basket of Eggs No.1
2010
Oil on canvas
217 × 181 cm
I like elegance but I cannot reach it. My paintings are always like someone spitting onto a beautiful landscape painting. It is not perfect. Maybe it is the emotion I want to show subconsciously, to be elegant while simultaneously looking silly and coughing.
-Duan Jianyu
The brushwork and color in Duan’s work bizarrely bring us to a blurry and slightly annoying place. Her paintings recall a boundary that is mentally non-tangible in our daily lives. Yet they precisely recall the feeling of daily living. Maybe the haunting “banality” is the product of our pursuing modernization.
2010’s
Duan Jianyu
His Name is Red No.3
2012
Oil on canvas
120 × 120 cm
Duan Jianyu
Anger
2012
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sharp, Sharp, Smart No.1
2014
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sharp, Sharp, Smart No.4
2014
Oil on canvas
140 × 180 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sharp, Sharp, Smart No.9
2015
Oil and color pencil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Sharp, Sharp, Smart No.10
2015
Oil on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Spring River in the Flower Moon Night 1
2017
Oil on canvas
180 × 250 cm
Duan Jianyu
Spring River in the Flower Moon Night 4
2017
Oil, spray paint, pencil and oil-based marker on canvas
180 × 250 cm
Duan Jianyu
My Little Rabbit No.1
2018
Oil, acrylic and spray on canvas
181 × 217 cm
Duan Jianyu
Horse No.3
2019
Oil, acrylic, pencil, oil-based marker on canvas
110 × 170.5 cm
Duan Jianyu
Automatic Writing No.1
2019
Oil, acrylic, oil-based marker and spray paint on canvas
180 × 200 cm
I search for the trivial, petty, fragile and mysterious details of life. I employ camouflage or artifice to portray them quietly, clumsily, seemingly reasonably or courteously. I obsess over the miscellaneous things in life.
-Duan Jianyu
Duan Jianyu wanders the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, so-called narrative follows the logic of painting itself, and unknown experiences open up. in Duan Jianyu’s work, the painting is not the result of selecting an image and expressing meaning. Instead, it 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. At the same time it is also based on a renewed faith in the relations between painting and life experience: the aura of humanity necessarily born by those colors, lines and forms can only be found in the process of returning to painting’s spirituality.
When Duan Jianyu’s paintbrush touches upon the collective memory of generations, her color palette and composition resonate with structures of desire deep within our bodies. These structures, built over long periods of time, are always calling upon us. They are not distant places or sources of nostalgia; rather, they are, quite possibly, the soil in which “evolution” can take root.
2020 – Now
Duan Jianyu
Duckweed
2020
Oil, acrylic, oil-based marker and pencil on canvas
180 × 250 cm
Duan Jianyu
Facekini No.2
2019
Oil, acrylic, watercolor pen and pencil on canvas
180 × 250 cm
Duan Jianyu
Michelin Seven Stars No.2
2020
Oil, acrylic, spray, oil pastel, oil-based marker and pencil on canvas
120 × 250 cm
Duan Jianyu
Dining Table (Front)
2021
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, oil-based marker and pencil on canvas
180 × 200 cm
Duan Jianyu
The Love of a Family
2023
Oil, acrylic and oil-based marker on canvas
140 × 200 cm
Duan Jianyu’s work is diversely interesting. Like Balzac, she portrays a contemporary Comédie humaine, engaging with all forms of life within the mortal world, as well as the refugees who traverse the boundaries between the human and the inhuman. Here, the formal process of painting echoes the diversity of life within the universe, fumbling about in search of togetherness.
All art works by Duan Jianyu © the Artist
Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space.
