This site entails a sample of my collected works of the past ten years. They are inspired by the guiding theme of nature, mostly depicting portrayals of flowers, as well as landscape interpretations. They are the ideal medium for my particular artistic expression, where color composition takes on a unique character - bright yet elegant, complex yet integrated. Even though my work is characterized by a naturalistic depiction of objects found in nature, it is precisely my particular use of color that lends itself to the freedom of artistic creativity and expression. In my works, it is color that creates a tension between the realistic and the imaginative, while at the same time encapsulating the epitome of native Chinese artistic emotion, understanding and interpretation. Using color as a structural element, the particular and the diffuse, realism and imagery create an artistic whole that seeks to transcend the boundaries of form and concept.

Not only are these paintings a unique, individual interpretation of the realism as perceived by myself, but they are also an articulation of the complex Chinese Zeitgeist in the postmodern environment of a struggling Beijing that seeks to come to crisps with the confounding conundrum of coevalness where the modern and traditional are intertwined yet curiously juxtaposed.

Already 40 years ago I was a member of the Underground Art Movement during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Since then, I have witnessed and actively participated in every aspect of the tumultuous history of the contemporary Chinese art scene that continuously has sought to find its path between the local and the global. Initially, the goal was to integrate local Chinese art into the international art world, but each step along the way, many artists, including myself, felt increasingly alienated by the Western experience. Defined by a series of overlapping engagements with Western art and cultural influences, the necessity of a new sense of a regional contemporary art identity that transcends the accepted norms and concepts about art, both in China and the West, became apparent to us. In our quest to find our own native artistic identity, Western influences increasingly posed an ideological and stylistic challenge to our imaginary and diffuse ideals.

Inspired by the vibrant and truly revolutionary spirit of the contemporary Chinese art scene, I, as well as many fellow Chinese artists have since then continually pursued our quest to carve out our own artistic expression in a dialectical fashion. Indeed, from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Chinese art scene witnessed an unprecedented fusion of artistic concepts, techniques and ideas that culminated in the emergence of a novel artistic spirit, imprinted by a search for a national cultural identity. The result has been the emergence of a multi-cultural yet distinctly Chinese art scene that took modern and traditional elements as its building blocks to create in a dialectical fashion a novel Chinese art style. Perhaps, the real meaning of Chinese postmodernism is to be found in this newly established middle ground, and it is precisely my works that are a direct expression of this artistic ideals.

Being at the forefront of China's avant-garde art scene and based on my professional training at one of China's finest art institutions, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, I have contributed in significant ways to the faceted artistic spirit of my generation and its times – a spirit that has sought to combine and amalgamate the old and new, western and traditional Chinese elements of artistic expression in order to create a novel, native Chinese art. My work has been heavily impacted by my teaching experience as well as by my students, who ethnically belong to a great variety of minorities at the National Ethnic Minorities University here in Beijing. My students' multiculturalism has left a lasting impression on me, allowing me to absorb a great variety of cultural elements and a deep understanding thereof. It seems obvious that novel native Chinese art cannot simply be the product of western influences and artistic forms alone, but needs to be based on the multiculturalism of China itself, including traditional Han Chinese cultural elements. The contemporaneity of Chinese art has to be multifaceted, and it is my longing to bring this in a dialectic fashion to the forefront through my art.