Yao Junzhong

YAO JUNZHONG (China, 1961).
Untitled. "Pink Series.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Provenance: Murmur Gallery
Measurements: 120 x 95 cm.

The Pink Series is one of the most recognized of the artist Yao Junzhong. It can be placed within the style called Chinese "capitalist realism" (also known as Chinese Cynical Realism or Political Pop).

Capitalist realism in China emerged in the 1990s, after the economic opening and political changes. Artists began to use realistic but ironic, sometimes satirical language to talk about the clash between tradition, communism and capitalism.

Yao Junzhong belongs to that generation of artists who lived through the transition, moved to Songzhuang, one of the epicenters of experimental art in Beijing. In his works (including the Pink Series), faces, bodies and atmospheres appear in a realistic key, but treated with an emotional or coloristic charge (pink, in this case) that introduces tension and ambiguity. Like other artists of this current (e.g. Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun), Yao does not paint an academic realism, but a realism deliberately contaminated by the market, politics and daily life under the emerging capitalism in China.

Yao Junzhong was born in 1961 in Tangshan, Hebei province. In 1982 he graduated from Hebei School of Light Industry majoring in Fine Arts. In 1992 he graduated from the Faculty of Oil Painting at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. Since 1993, he has devoted himself professionally to painting. He lived in different artists' villages or communities in Beijing: in 1994 he moved to Songzhuang artists' village, and before that also to "Sung Chuang small fortress village" in Tongzhou. His work has participated in national and international exhibitions, including in Norway and other countries. In addition to painting, he has opened his own galleries in different cities (Beijing, Shenzhen, Quanzhou) and actively participates in art-related social activities.