#image 1#

Part of an active and influential group of artists linked to the former Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, fifty-year-old Geng Jianyi is responsible for one of the most consistent and profound oeuvres of the 1980s Chinese avant-garde. As his peers were experimenting with Pop, dada, and surrealist painting styles, Geng began showing concept-driven, text- and photo-based, and instructional works that posed stark questions about the human condition and about individual relationships to social institutions. His influence on his contemporaries and younger generations (as well as his distaste for the spotlight) makes this career survey—featuring nearly a hundred works produced over twenty-three years—an affair not to be missed.

— Pauline J. Yao