About Jian Guo Xu
Jian Guo Xu is an artist for our times. Straddling the artistic traditions of both Eastern abstract brushwork and Western color sensibility, Xu has melded both techniques to create works that push the boundaries of contemporary art. Xu's unique medium, the integration of rice paper with sumi ink and watercolor with canvas, acrylics and oil paints testify to his cross-cultural heritage.
The depth of Xu's (pronounced "shue") mastery of both Eastern and Western sensibilities lies in his atypical background. In his native China, Xu at the age of 10 was recognized as a talent by the painting master Y.Z. How, from whom Xu received years of training in classical Chinese art. In 1980, after China opened its doors, American art critics recognized Xu's artistic maturation; his style combined a mastery of Chinese artistic traditions with an exploration of Western art and techniques. His works were exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum, Smith College, Boston Museum College, and other institutions across the United States. His successful exhibits in the U.S. led to a scholarship and fellowship from Bard College, where he received his MFA in 1987. Xu, now an American citizen, continues to be represented in one-man shows in New York City and has also exhibited worldwide. His paintings hang in the homes of private collectors, in City Center, and in New York City.
Xu's works have been featured in both Christie's and Sotheby's Important Contemporary Chinese Art Sales. In addition to his paintings, for the past four years Xu has been commissioned to create a private three-acre "scholar's garden" (the garden is displayed at www.xuscapes.com)., a landscape that realize in 3-dimensional space, his creative vision- the combining of Eastern and Western artistic sensibilities. This large-scale "art of space" was showcased in a 14-page special feature in the October 2007 issue of The Modern Estate Magazine, which was recently given a 2007 Eddie Award (for editorial excellence) by Folio: magazine.
Back to New Nature: The New Dialogue between Light and Color.
A New Color Theory by Jian Guo Xu
Light, the fundamental element of nature upon which all of Western art has been based, has been reconstituted: It is no longer natural. In the brightly lit world of unnatural lights such as ours, traditional light and color theories can no longer be applied. The light of our contemporary experience is an alien, artificial light form created by man. Unlike the sun, which illuminates all objects on earth indiscriminately, this manmade light has its own characteristics that shine closely upon us and emit visual images that communicate with us. Our interaction with light and the visual image is radically altered because we, the viewer, are the illuminated reflections of this new light. This new form of light has not only changed nature itself but has also remodeled the social, psychological, and visual constructs of our daily experience. My art is called Back to the New Nature precisely because it portrays and redefines this new phenomenon of alien light and its even more alien “nature.” My works are paintings of the lights behind the images, lights which surround and look back at us with a perpetual “gaze.” Back to the New Nature paintings are distilled images of that gaze.