Autumn Dream – Solo Exhibition of a Famous Chinese Artist, Guan WeiJun
Guan WeiJun was born in Shanghai and went to Belgium to further his study in 1990. He studied at the Belgium Royal Academy of the Arts and graduated from the Formative Arts Department at the 8th University of Paris. His talent is thus fully and officially recognized, and for a number of years now, it has also won appreciation outside the Belgian borders, especially in Paris. Now, he is a member of both the Artists' Association of Belgium and Shanghai. He has been awarded dozens of international prizes in many competitions and his work has already been shown in a large number of galleries in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Spain, etc. The arts publishing house of Belgium published his personal album for him in 2003 and his work was compiled into the dictionary of Belgium artists. Much of Guan's work has been collected by governments, foundations, castles and individuals. His work is also regarded as important by reports and commentaries in China.
He has succeeded in blending eastern tradition with European influences. His work has a dualistic nature. On one hand, it displays an exceptional technical mastery and a thorough knowledge of the codes of representation; on the other, a remarkable power of imagination and sensitivity that reaches beyond the borders of reality and conveys a dreamlike and marvelous dimension. The kind of veil that used to hang over Guan's landscape is still there in the compositions human figures that make out the greatest part of his present work. As if these scenes were drawn from a dream or from a vision, to be transmuted under the effect of light and color. A number of compositions seem to reflect the personal vision of legendary tales, of narratives or historical episodes that hark back to a distant past. They justify the invention of a great diversity of costumes. It results in genuine formalized ballets, of chromatic explosions that denote a truly lyrical talent.
From a four-year education at the Arts Institute in his native town, he retained an excellent technical ability; he contributed widely to the development of a form of painting which, from the very beginning, tended to an hyperrealistic from of expression. He was originally known as a portrait painter. For more than ten years, Guan worked for the Shanghai Advertisement Corporation for which he executed many orders. As this time he was awarded servral prizes and was a member, in Shanghai, of the Artists' Corporation, of the Association for Watercolor Painting and of the Academy of Oil-painting. It should be remembered that oil painting was then an uncommon technique in China where traditional painting remained loyal to the use of Indian ink and a brush.
In 1990, following an acquaintanceship with a member of the Belgian Consulate in Shanghai, Guan decides to visit Europe and he settles in Brussels. the artist has been living in this city for the past thirteen years and has soon found his place in the local artistic commuity. A number of exhibitions have been organized and he has even won special recognition from the "Cultural Commission of the French Community - Section Brussels - Capital" on the occasion of the 47th Louis Schmidt Prize in 1996. The following year he was awarded the "First Prize of the Government of the French Community" (Ministry of Culture and Permanent Education). His talent is thus fully and officially recognized and, for a number of years now, it has also won appreciation outside the Belgian borders, especially in Paris.
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