Simple sophistication

Guang Jun is noted for modesty and an easygoing attitude, as well as a sense of humor.

The veteran artist's ongoing one-man exhibition at the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Life as It Is, conveys the same amiability and openness with which the 85-year-old treats people around him.

The spacious exhibition hall has been decorated as minimally as possible. Paintings, prints and sculptures hang on walls, and are placed on wooden boxes and tables, displayed in cabinets, or simply laid out on the ground. Some look finished while others do not, as if waiting to be tweaked or to be touched up later.

The chairs and sofas everywhere allow visitors to have a comfortable experience as they enjoy the work and the show. As they do, they can hear the harmonica being played by Guang, accompanied by his pet dog Hanhan, in a video that is part of the exhibition.

To accentuate the casual mood, tools and rubbish are piled up in one corner of the room, giving people the false impression that the exhibition is still in the process of being readied.

"It is hard to describe what is going on; the future is unpredictable; let life unfold as it will," Guang writes in the preface of the exhibition.

Running through until Dec 17, there was no opening ceremony. It's Guang's hope that visitors to the exhibition being held at the school where he was trained, taught, and worked for decades, will feel relaxed and curious, as if they are entering his studio, but also feel his seriousness and commitment to art.

Graduating from CAFA's affiliated high school and the academy's printmaking department, Guang has been an artist since 1959. The work on show reveals an intriguing world in which he enjoys art by seeking breakthroughs in style, medium and ways of presentation, while simultaneously seeking a carefree state of life.

His simple compositions, smooth lines and smart color arrangements together result in a sophisticated style that demonstrates a lifelong accumulation of artistry and wisdom.

"When I make a painting, the motivation may be a simple idea, or a common fact, rather than something deep," he says. "I have been painting what is in my mind these days, more than what is before my eyes. I want myself to be even more imaginative, to invent scenes in my paintings. It is something subjective and independent."

Guang got his bachelor's and master's degrees in printmaking at CAFA, but driven by what he calls his "wild flights of fancy", has since ventured into watercolors, oil paintings, photography and sculpture to expand his embrace of art.

Sometimes he likes to add witty commentaries to his work. The New Year's cards on display are one example.

"Every year I design one for the Chinese New Year, not only because this is something printmakers routinely do," he says, "but also because I see it as a form of a compact with the world, that as long as I live, I will make art."

One of Guang's teachers was Huang Yongyu, himself a prolific printmaker and versatile artist and designer, who passed away this June.

Guang recalls that one day in 2018 he told Huang that he made five to six prints a year. "Before I could finish speaking, he said 'that's not many for you'. I told him that my work was time-consuming and I also did oil paintings, and again he said 'that's not many'. Since then, I have been working harder."

Guang has added a drawing to the show that he made of Huang's back as he was sketching in his native Hunan province in 2004.

"I would have asked him to come to see my exhibition and would have looked forward to his criticism and been inspired," Guang says. "But now that is impossible. He can't make it. He has become a cloud, just as he once said, for me to look up and think of him."