“What moves men of genius, or rather, what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has been said already is still not enough.”

– Eugène Delacroix

Ever since 1893 when, in response to the invention of the daguerreotype, Paul Delaroche famously exclaimed, “From today, painting is dead,” the argument over whether painting is actually dead or not has remained one of the most persistent debates of the modern and post-modern eras. To continue this dispute, much less partake in it, is no longer interesting, nor relevant. It is, however, important to keep this piece of Art history in mind when looking at Contemporary paintings.

Rather than classifying painting as something that is either dead or alive, it would be more appropriate to think of it as a reoccurring medium of expression that is continuously being reinvented. To the viewer, a painting exists only as it is being viewed, but the context of a painting, inconstant and temporal, is at the same time autonomous from and interconnected with the world around it. Thus the painting, as we view it, and the context that we view it under, becomes a moment of transition between past and future in this recurrent cycle.

“Re: Painting” is a group of artists brought together in three separate exhibition spaces under the context of one exhibition. Each exhibition space has work by the same group of artists, creating three different but related directions. 

But for all that we can know and say about painting, it is equally true that there is nothing we can know or say about painting.

Participating Artists: Bi Jianye, Gong Jian, Huang Liang, Hexie Baroque Group, Jia Aili, Jiang Guozhe, Ma Ke, Ou Yangchun,Qin Qi, Qi Wenzhang, Song Yuanyuan, Sun Xun, Wang Xingjie, Wang Guangle, Wu Guang Yu, Xiao Bo, Xiao Jiang, Yang Rui, Zhou Yilun, Zhang Yexing, Zhang Hao