As one of the significant member of young budding artists in 1990s, He Seng, artist graduated from Sichuan Academic of Fine Arts, is widely known by China contemporary art circle for the style of strong expressiveness and the girls with the emotion of decadence in his paintings. However, after 2005, the artist was tired of signifying concept works, which lead him to explore new direction of creation besides proceeding to perfect the series of the girl. Probably it is the intention of escaping from the noisy reality and trending to the peaceful nature that resulted in He Seng’s trial of adopting traditional images as the theme of his creation—images of Li Shan, Xu Wei, Ma Yuan and other traditional art masters are “borrowed” into his canvas.

This is a adventurous attempt, but also necessary in the development of Chinese culture. Chinese modern art hasn’t form own integrity system after learning western art for nearly thirty years, which indicates that the standard of western art is not the proper way for Chinese art—Chinese modern art can truly continue by finding the core in our own cultural logic after borrowing western art forms. The new works of He Seng seem to be the practice of this cultural drift. They, of course, will be tested by the time.