The opening ceremony of the Xi Contemporary Art Center (hereinafter referred to as "Xi Center") and its inaugural exhibition, "Polyphonic Theatre - Contemporary Painting Exhibition", were held in Foshan, Guangdong.

The inaugural exhibition, themed "Polyphonic Theater," emphasizes the use of diverse visual expressions and avant-garde creative language to outline the contemporary art movement and academic heights. It is curated by Professor Shi Lei of South China Normal University, with renowned critic and contemporary artist Zou Jianping serving as academic director, and produced by Ms. Gao Xi.

The "Polyphonic Theater" brings together more than twenty leading figures in contemporary Chinese painting, showcasing over thirty significant and representative works. Participating artists include: Yuan Yunsheng, Shang Yang, Li Bangyao, Zhu Jinshi, Mao Xuhui, Zou Jianping, Xu Jiang, Yang Jiecang, Tan Ping, Shi Lei, Chen Shaoxiong, Duan Jianghua, Luo Xiangke, Lin Yilin, Jing Kewen, Fan Bo, Zhao Bandi, Yin Chaoyang, Qin Qi, Chen Yujun, Zhao Zhao, Wang Qianyao, and others.

The event was attended by a large number of guests, including nearly 300 celebrities from the art, academic, business and social circles, who gathered together to witness the official opening of the Xi Contemporary Art Center, adding another important landmark to the contemporary art landscape of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Host's opening remarks and guest introductions

Host Wang Jiayi first welcomed the guests and then gave a special introduction to the background of the establishment of Xi Contemporary Art Center and its core concept of "art leading life".

Honorary Curator Gao Xi delivered a speech.

Director Gao Xi emphasized that the art center will break down the boundaries of the ivory tower of art, build a cultural field that combines intellectual sharpness with public warmth, and promote the integration of locality and contemporaneity, with the core cultural mission of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as its core.

Speech by Zheng Lin, founder of Tang Contemporary Art Center

With his professional vision and grand strategy, Mr. Zheng Lin outlined a blueprint for the development of the contemporary art market, emphasizing the importance of inter-institutional cooperation in promoting the development of the contemporary art ecosystem.

Academic moderator Zou Jianping speaks

With profound academic thought, Zou Jianping explained the exhibition's "polyphonic" framework—presenting a multi-voiced visual dialogue model through multiple nested elements of spatial theater, contemporary theater, and life theater.

Artist representative Duan Jianghua speaks

Duan Jianghua, a representative of the participating artists, shared his creative thoughts and feelings about participating in the exhibition.

Performance and ribbon-cutting

The ceremony featured a special duet performance, vividly interpreting the theme of "The Stream Flows Long and Far" through the unique form of "dance painting." To a futuristic musical atmosphere, male and female dancers made a graceful entrance with progressively stronger rhythms, gradually building to a climax. Holding containers of paint, the dancers allowed the pigments to flow naturally from their bodies to the ground, symbolizing the continuous flow of a stream. The ceremony concluded with the dancers forming shapes of trees and stones. Coinciding with the auspicious occasion of the Dragon Raising its Head on the second day of the second lunar month, all the guests looked up at the host on the second floor, and the photographer captured this precious and heartwarming group photo.

The opening ribbon-cutting ceremony was jointly officiated by renowned theorist and professor at South China Normal University Pi Daojian, president of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and renowned artist Fan Bo, renowned theorist and former director of Hubei Museum of Art Ji Shaofeng, chairman of the board of directors of Zhenbao Bus and director of 33 Art Museum Liu Yi, and founder of Kus Group Wang Shan, officially announcing the grand opening of Xi Contemporary Art Center.

Guided tour by curator Shi Lei

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the "Polyphonic Theatre - Contemporary Painting Exhibition" officially opened. Against the backdrop of China's more than forty years of reform and opening up, the exhibition carefully selects representative works by artists from different historical junctures. Located in the heart of the Greater Bay Area, the exhibition resonates deeply with the Greater Bay Area's status as a forefront of reform and opening up, using artistic creation to testify to the historical process and social impact of reform and opening up. This exhibition uses polyphonic theatre as its academic framework, employing a multi-part, intergenerational visual discourse to construct three fields: spatial theatre, historical theatre, and life journey, presenting a nearly sixty-year-long lineage of painting and a history of contemporary art spirit.

Shi Lei, the curator of this exhibition and director of Xiguan, completed the overall curatorial discourse with a rigorous academic concept. During the guided tour, he provided a detailed, professional and in-depth explanation of the creative context and connotation of each artist's work, allowing the audience to not only directly face the excellent original works, but also to more clearly understand the historical context and artistic logic behind the works, thus achieving a dual improvement in viewing and understanding.

The opening ceremony was concise, fast-paced, and creatively brilliant, with a lively and orderly atmosphere. The strong lineup of exhibitors, the profound historical significance, and the professional academic presentation combined to offer the guests a high-quality art feast that blended historical depth with contemporary vitality, earning unanimous praise from all sectors.

The exhibition will run until May 31 and is open to the public.

Selected works

Yuan Yunsheng, *The Shepherd Boy and Two Lovers*, ink and color on paper.

105 x 102 cm, 1979

Yuan YunshengHis painting practice constitutes a landmark in China's opening-up process. His 1979 mural at the Capital Airport, "Water Splashing Festival – A Hymn to Life," with its groundbreaking visual language, became a cultural symbol of the era's transformation. His teaching experience at universities such as Harvard University in the United States, beginning in the 1980s, allowed him to expand the boundaries of form through dialogue with leading international artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and de Kooning. After returning to China, his teaching and creation at the Central Academy of Fine Arts achieved a fusion between traditional Eastern linear structure and modern abstract composition.

The works on display, including "Shepherd Boy and Lovers," "Ode to Life," and "Little Train," respectively present multiple explorations in decorative lyricism, rhythmic expression, and abstract structure, outlining a clear trajectory from public narrative to individual poetics, and from figurative representation to abstract construction.

Shang Yang, Landscape with Two Trees, oil and acrylic on canvas,

66 x 135 cm, 2021

Shang YangHis creations represent the pinnacle of Chinese painting in this era. His artistic language extensively absorbs the material experience and formal style of Western modern art, yet he always anchors his artistic foundation in the Chinese humanistic spirit and traditional cultural context, achieving a deep integration between international formal language and local spiritual core.

The works, with their rich textures and abstract landscapes, convey profound poetry and cultural critique. Through continuous questioning of nature, history, and ecology, they construct a visual paradigm that combines intellectual depth, formal strength, and Eastern aesthetics, providing an important reference for the construction of cultural subjectivity in contemporary painting.

Li Bangyao, Indoor No. 17, Acrylic on canvas

200 x 150 cm, 2015

Li BangyaoHis artistic practice, grounded in painting and design, forms a visual diagnosis of the consumer society landscape. Accompanying the social transformation brought about by reform and opening up, he transforms modern philosophical and aesthetic theories into visual analysis tools, using everyday commodities and consumer symbols as vehicles to continuously explore the complex relationship between the order of things and human existence.

Between precise visual coding and cool social observation, the work reveals the profound shaping of modern social structure and individual spiritual world by consumer culture, constituting a visual reflection on contemporary lifestyles.

Zhu Jinshi, Valley in the Mirror II, oil on canvas.

180 x 160 cm, 2022

Zhu JinshiTaking materiality as a starting point, the works push the boundaries of abstract painting language. The works use high-density pigment accumulation to form a perceptible visual texture, releasing the spiritual energy of the materials themselves in a minimalist composition, and fusing bodily experience, material properties and spatial awareness into one.

Its consistent and stable abstract practice constructs a field with a sense of volume, temporality and spirituality in the two-dimensional space, providing a solid model for the deepening of the language of Chinese abstract art.

Mao Xuhui, *Guishan Series: Red Earth Road II*, oil on canvas.

89.5 x 120 cm, 1984

Mao XuhuiHis early "Guishan Series" was rooted in on-site experience and life memory, using primitive and symbolic visual language to transcend the general reproduction of landscapes and point to an intuitive inquiry into the essence of nature and life.

This early practice is consistent with the iconic symbol system that followed, together forming a progressive trajectory from life experience to spiritual symbols. It uses expressive brushstrokes to carry the collision between individual spirit and the context of the times, and excavates visual metaphors with ontological depth from everyday objects.

Zou Jianping, "Sacred Mountains and Rivers: The White Pagoda," mixed media.

200 x 200 cm, 1990-2021

Zou JianpingThe artist's work maintains a tension between secular narrative and spiritual transcendence. The works exhibited this time incorporate Buddhist symbols and spiritual imagery, superimposing a transcendent philosophical perspective on the realistic depiction of everyday life, so that the visual narrative can simultaneously carry secular concerns and ultimate questions, expanding the spiritual space of painting.

Xu Jiang, *Oriental Sunflower and Golden Pagoda*, oil on canvas.

280 x 540 cm, 2014

Xu JiangUsing "Sunflower Garden" as a recurring motif, natural objects are transformed into visual symbols that carry historical memory and the will to live.

The painting, with its rich colors and powerful brushstrokes, constructs an epic visual atmosphere. Through repeated depictions of plant life, it completes a visual contemplation on collective memory, the passage of time, and the resilience of existence, giving the natural subject matter a contemporary scope that transcends individual experience.

Yang Jiecang, *OH MY GOD - Black Clouds*, ink and color on silk.

223 ✕ 120 cm ✕ 9, 2007-2008

Yang JiecangThe practice exhibits distinct cross-media and cross-cultural characteristics. The works take ink painting as their foundation, opening up a dialogue space between traditional material grammar and contemporary conceptual vision, and continuously exploring the complex entanglement of cultural identity, historical memory and bodily experience.

Its cross-media practices break down media barriers, giving traditional materials conceptual vitality and visual tension in the contemporary context.

Tan Ping, *Sealed in Dust*, acrylic on canvas.

200 x 300 cm, 2015

Tan PingThe abstract expression seeks a dynamic balance between order and chance, control and release.

Based on simple geometric shapes and rational color structures, it contains rich inner rhythms and spiritual intentions in a highly restrained visual form, and settles emotions, experiences and sense of time into a minimalist and precise visual grammar, constructing an abstract paradigm that is calm, pure and full of inner dynamism.

Shi Lei, *Land of Life*, oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm, 2022

Shi LeiWith a high degree of autonomy and sensitivity, it rejects stylistic solidification, and the dynamic evolution of its visual appearance is a direct manifestation of its creative vitality.

The oil painting "Land of Life" exhibited this time takes the Eastern view of life as its internal logic and continuously responds to its overarching artistic theme: the value of life and the symbiotic relationship between the individual and nature.

Through fragmented images and rich color layers, the works transform real-world experiences into surreal visual narratives, demonstrating a free creative spirit unbound by paradigms.

Exhibition site

Exhibition Information

Polyphonic Theatre - Contemporary Painting Exhibition

Polyphonic Stages: Contemporary Painting Exhibition

March 16, 2026 - May 31, 2026

Producer:Gao Xi

Curator:Shi Lei

Academic Host:Zou Jianping

Work Team:Tao Qingyou, Deng Chuanwei, Fu Xiake

Participating Artists:Yuan Yunsheng, Shang Yang, Li Bangyao, Zhu Jinshi, Mao Xuhui, Zou Jianping, Xu Jiang, Yang Jiecang, Tan Ping, Shi Lei, Chen Shaoxiong, Duan Jianghua, Luo Xiangke, Lin Yilin, Jing Kewen, Fan Bo, Zhao Bandi, Yin Chaoyang, Qin Qi, Chen Yujun, Zhao Zhao, Wang Qianyao

host:Creek Contemporary Art Center

Co-organizer:Tang Contemporary Art Center

Stream connects to the river, art converges in the north and south.

With the aim of "art leading life", Xi Contemporary Art Center discovers creative ways of viewing through diverse knowledge graphs, promotes the integration of locality and contemporaneity of art, and builds a new art landmark that combines intellectual sharpness and public warmth.

The Xi Contemporary Art Center is guided by the philosophy of “Art Enriching Life”. Drawing upon a diverse knowledge framework, it fosters innovative modes of visual and conceptual engagement, advances the synthesis of local cultural specificity with contemporary artistic practice, and establishes a distinctive cultural landmark that balances intellectual rigor with broad public resonance.

Address: Right side of F1, D+ Home Furnishing Art Industrial Park, No. 1 Wenchang Road, Longjiang Town, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province

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