The Start of a Long Journey - The Collection of Excellent Graduation Works (2009-2011)

Since its founding, the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) has built an extensive collection of the outstanding works of its alumni. To this day, the collection has become an integral part of the history of fine arts education in China. Many alumni have emerged as leaders and representatives of the development of Chinese art. In this sense, the CAFA alumni collection has a crucial place in Chinese art history and is a unique cultural treasure.

In recent years, CAFA has embarked on many projects that sought to advance the academy and its teaching. These efforts have broadened the academy’s artistic boundaries, students' vision and creativity to significant success. In 2008, CAFA founded a new contemporary art museum, which greatly expanded the academy’s archive of alumni works. As the CAFA Art Museum becomes more refined in scope and programme, the collection grows to reveal the uniqueness of our era and CAFA's accomplishments in education.

This exhibition presents a selection of outstanding works by CAFA alumni from the past three years. The featured works make for an exemplary showcase of fine arts education in today's China; they reflect the emerging styles and trends of a new generation of artists and how they relate to the world, society and their surroundings through art. The diversity in perspectives, art forms and artistic concepts showcased here offers a glimpse into their experimentations on and engagements with various strands of narratives – traditional, contemporary, indigenous and global.

In One Bedroom Apartment, Jiao Meng returns important works in Western contemporary art to a mundane context and offers his critique of established contemporary art history. Li Hongbo’s Flexibility finds a unique expression by combining techniques of Chinese folk art and contemporary visual representation. In Pan Lin’s Holes, two-dimensional expression of painting is integrated with three-dimensional spatial articulation of installation work to provide a fresh way of viewing. The video work Donglai Hotel by Guo Shoutao delineates the cacophony of reality with slow-paced humour. Some works, including those by Fan Yajun, Zhang Meng and Bian Kai, approach traditional Chinese art forms by combining traditional technical finesse and modern visual aesthetics. Diverse explorations on material and form can be found in works by Yang Qiong, Qi Chenxi, Mao Na, Hu Keren, while other artists attempt at a fresh take on the expressive potential and narrative capability of oil painting (Fu Yingying, Zhou Dong, Wang Ke, Liang You, Zhou Ting and Li Chengcheng). On the one hand, there are works that try to instil a sense of contemporary relevance in traditional works on paper (Zhang Yifan, Li Xiaoyu, Teng Ai, He Pengqi, Zhu Peihong, Xie Lanxia and Li Yazhang) and extend the technical and formal reach of sculpture (Yuan Jia and Su Chi). On the other hand, some artists seek to construct their artistic identities through manipulating and reinterpreting abundant existing visual material scattered in reality and history (Yang Yuming, Shu Shanyi and Kuang Da). The future of Chinese art is in the making and part of this process is portrayed here.

This exhibition also introduces a new venture from the prestigious antiquarian bookseller, Bernard Quaritch Ltd. The project, Art@GoldenSquare, is housed in the company’s former premises in Soho. The renovated nineteenth-century textile factory retains much of its character and charm, while acting a unique new space to display books and art.