Recent Works by Shen Liang

Shen Liang (b. 1976 in Liaoning, China) is one of the few artists of his generation to have attracted international attention.

He graduated from the elite Central Academy of Fine Arts Oil Painting Department in 2003 and therefore is a member of the new wave of artists in China who no longer recall the traumas of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.

This young generation has little interest in exorcising the psychological injuries inflicted on their parents by the past nor in examining the evolution of the political context since. Artists in their late 20's to early 30's today are caught up in the powerful economic and social currents of modern China. They feel little or no connection with the past and share the buoyant self-confidence of a China that has suddenly become sure of her destiny in the 21st century.

Shen Liang and others are therefore trying to formulate a new language to express this new reality: the massive dislocation of society, the emergence of an economy that is affecting the entire world, the wholesale demolition of the country's architectural past and the psychological consequences of these transformations.

The focus of Shen Liang's work is on the response of today's hurried generation to a cultural icon of China's past – Peking Opera. He identifies a wistfulness in the harsh materialism rampant in the cities for the cultural certainties of an earlier era. The flickering, blurred surfaces of his depictions of the opera however hint at the medium of film and photography as the conduit of access for today's audience.

His latest works are drawings that reflect the propaganda posters, photographs, books and cigarette cases from the period in the 1950's and 1960's when his parents were children. He claims no ideological content for these images but rather urges us to see them for what they are – nostalgic attempts to document them – "reducing life to its most natural and original face".