GUO JIAN
Guo Jian. Photo by Peter Diseris
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Arriving in Australia in 1992, GUO JIAN's art practice has been fuelled by his position as a reflective, sharply satirical Chinese expatriate who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and under a deeply communist regime. Guo Jian’s early experiences of art were inevitably entwined with communist authority, ideology and militaristic power - his first acquaintance with art was time spent as a propaganda-poster painter for the People’s Liberation Army then later, as an art student in Beijing, he took part in the protests which led to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Guo Jian takes the Socialist Realism he grew up with in China, subverts and transforms it, often humorously, into Socio-Realism in an almost celebratory act of protest and liberation. His flat surfaces and heightened colours owe much to the Chinese visual and political language of the Communist era. Dancing girls in dressed in traditional ballet costumes or in uniforms with weapons are either placed in the foreground with soldiers leering (usually in disquieting repetition of Guo Jian’s own face) or in the background as a lingerie-clad model straight out of a Western fashion magazine poses in the foreground; a contrast of unrestricted sexuality and enforced conformity. The Western woman is a temptation, a siren and a subversive outsider in scenes such as Untitled #1 (2006) and Untitled #5 (2005). Underlying conflicting themes of sex and violence, East and West are dominant forces in Jian’s works. Soldiers are captivated and awestruck by female performers, sometimes in quiet contemplation, sometimes in overly excited wonderment, but a sense of false happiness, hypocrisy and hysteria often pervade the scenes.
Following his experience as a propaganda artist and officer in the People’s Liberation Army in the late 1970s, Guo Jian has carved an impressive career as a contemporary artist in Australia, participating in numerous exhibitions here and in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and China. He has major works in key institutional collection at the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Queensland Art Gallery. He is well-represented across several significant private collections, including the Geoff Raby Collection of Chinese Art, which last year was gifted as a record-breaking donation to the La Trobe University.