Platform China Contemporary Art Institute will present its first major collaborative solo exhibition Seasons with artist Duan Yuanwen, opening on April 12.
In art history, the motif of "life" has been reinterpreted countless times, shedding its fresh veneer to become almost ordinary. Yet it persists cyclically, descending anew with each generation of artists into the eternal flow of time. Duan Yuanwen does not shy away from this "tired" theme. Instead, he treats decay as nutrients for rebirth, transforming it into a novel source of inspiration. Life, after all, is inherently cyclical: the passage of time marks both the fading of all things and the gestation of new beginnings.
Duan Yuanwen (b. 1978, Hengyang, Hunan; graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2003; currently lives and works in Guangzhou) channels instinctive vitality into his recent paintings. Pagodas, skulls, flesh, flowers, and landscapes emerge organically on his canvases. His color-block pagodas are not anchored to the earth; they lack foundations or endpoints, instead congregating abruptly in a weightless, boundless space. Rocks bear witness to eons of time, while weeds struggle free from layers of compression and stacking to live out their own life cycles. These elements defy linear chronology and resist attachment to cultural narratives or historical contexts.
Duan Yuanwen dissects life, fragmenting visible flesh into amorphous shapes and scattered slices. He lets life accumulate, grow, and decay across vast fields, immersing it in ceaseless self-projection and the turn of seasons. Here, there is no emotional partiality—in life’s torrent, emotions and flesh are impartially dissected. Yet their enduring presence will eventually reunite in new forms. When bones and blossoms share a chaotic wilderness of brushstrokes, the dissolution of one form clears space for another’s emergence. Painting thus becomes tangible evidence of life’s material cycles.
As critic Wang Min’an insightfully observes: “This is the arbitrariness of painting, or rather, its neutrality... Here, the meditation on death through painting is conveyed via painting’s infinite proliferation.” This “passionless expressionism” quietly dismantles anthropocentric views of life, forcing us to confront a stark cosmic truth: Life exists without the imperative to produce meaning; it inherently needs no answers.
