Rose Thinks of Rose

Oil on canvas 

150 x 180 cm

2009-2012

Ling Jian was born in Shandong province, 1963. His work is instantly recognizable – youthful beauties with impossibly porcelain skin, dewey lips and doe eyes touched by a hint of tragedy. These women are hyper real hybrids – processed through a more than 20 year period spent between China and Europe. They reflect the evolution of the human race, as they are symbols of a particular era and environment and the manifestation of myriad personalities and lifestyles. Ling Jian comments, “The cold skin of the women in my paintings symbolizes a high degree of spiritual indifference and melancholy that come about when ideals have vanished,” Critic Peter Frank wrote of Ling Jian’s portraits, “[he] produces such unseemly, coarsely pandering images not in order to sell or seduce, but to provoke disquietude, to deconstruct the modern process of seduction through imagery.”

Ling Jian has had solo shows in Beijing, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Brussels, Berlin and Hamburg. In 2010 his twin-solo exhibition opened in two locations in Beijing – the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, and the Today Art Museum. He is represented by Shoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong, and currently lives and works in Beijing.