Private Game
Post-80s avant-garde artists series exhibitions Phrase 1.

The first show presents six artists (Liu RuiZhao, Hao ChongTao etc.) on oil painting, photography and experimental printmaking. These artists share obscure vision in their intimate fantasy, representing an emerging trend of adventurous individuality in post-80s art.

Ignorance of social problems & pop culture accompanies these six artists' suspicious and gloomy mentality, they adopt a more critical approach and express their distrust. Unlike their counterparts of post-70s who are obsessed with cartoon or "Cruel Youth" paintings, the post-80s don't buy that probably because of lack of visual novelty and life experiences; they are determined to create their very own private universe.

Oil painter Liu RuiZhao captures bizarre life moments in dramatic lighting. Dressed in ridiculous casual night-suits with hairstyles like an upside-down cooking pot, his figures in tedious life routines are dramatized and mystified, their adolescence hidden safely in darkness are suddenly exposed, gazing at viewers, shocked and dumfounded. Liu has weird magic in his visual imagination, making up his own narrative scenarios, always mysteriously attracting.

Also graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Hao ChongTao depicts boys idling on the edge of reality and dreams. Pale and expressionless like wooden puppets, his boys play together but lonely at heart, nervous and vigilant. Iconic communist red cravats on their necks carry no political message, and instead it implies the innocence of childhood memories. These unhappy boys seem to be floating away aimlessly.

Visually, this group of post-80s artists demonstrates two-dimensional interests and applies certain photographic influence on their canvases, while maintaining elegant academic tastes in skillful manipulation of colour and composition.