Xu Cong 徐悰
Born into the post-80s generation, Xu Cong is an avant-garde Chinese artist whose works are slowly gaining international recognition. After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Xu deviated from the traditional artistic discipline to embrace the contemporary art movement. However, vestiges of her classical Chinese ink painting training are still apparent in her paintings upon close observation.
Her art is a process of experimenting and correction, expressed through repeated layering of the paint. At the beginning, she paints the canvas impulsively like a naive child, creating a graffiti-like artwork that is symbolic of her attempts to break free from the rules and regulations that she faced everyday while growing up. She then covers the canvas with another thick layer of paint in a regulated manner to create a a landscape object. Contradictory, her art is all about logical arrangement. Later on, she carefully paints with structure and rules, resembling her efforts to fit into society. Essentially, the influence of her living environment is so immense that she gave in.
From the outside, her landscape representation appears to be innocent but if you look closely into the details, you can tell see a subtle rebellious movement that she created to express her convictions.
