FACE 2 FACE: Portraits and Interiors - Chinese-Dutch Painting Exhibition will open to the public from March 4th to 30th 2013 at Beijing Today Art Museum. Hosted by Today Art Museum and curated by Cees Hendrikse and Sabine Wang, the exhibition presents once more a classic genre in the history of fine art – portrait and interior painting - through the works of Chen Danqing, Jan Worst, Mao Yan and Philip Akkerman, four artists from China and the Netherlands.

FACE 2 FACE

Portraits and interiors is a theme in the history of visual arts that always attracts the interest and attention of people. It is time-honored in the Netherlands and being expressed in a characteristic style in Chinese painting. The featured four artists from the two countries will present their exploration of portrait and interior painting from different perspectives at the exhibition, and thereby intrigue a unique cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary dialogue. The remarkable difference in the four artists’ cultural backgrounds poses a special challenge and attaches more significance to this exhibition. Chinese viewers will be face to face with an artistic style which is unfamiliar in their tradition, while western viewers might as well have to adapt their notions on Chinese contemporary art.

The Featured Artists

Chen Danqing (born 1953, Beijing/China) is one of the leading figures in China’s contemporary art scene. The 1980s saw Chinese oil painting breaking off from the long-established mindset of propaganda and ideological education and regaining gradually the essential artistic values. Chen Danqing was one of the central figures that boosted this reform in art. Chen’s Tibet Series (1980) was a sensation in the art scene and its repercussions last till today. The dichotomic characteristics of tradition and modernity is very well embodied in Chen’s recent works of portrait.

Jan Worst (born 1953, Groningen/The Netherlands) is an internationally renowned Dutch artist. His works probe the ambiguous and turbulent desires deep in the heart of a human being from the angle of a western observer. The extravagant interior decoration in his paintings becomes a stage setting for the expression of inner agony of mankind. The tapestry and books create a thorough contrast to the solitude of the figure among them. This style echoes artists from both the classic and the golden age of Dutch and Flanders paintings.

Mao Yan (born 1968, Nanjing/China) is a very important contemporary Chinese artist of conceptual portraits. His works convey the figure’s spiritual world vividly with subtle technique and achieve unity of the form and the soul successfully. Mao created plenty of portraits of the same young white western model. It is a breakup with the stereotype of a typical Chinese artist and a manifestation of his neutral stand and uniqueness.

Philip Akkerman (born 1957, The Hague/The Netherlands) constantly explores the endless possibilities in painting and art. His endeavors go as far as to the existentialistic contemplation of what is self and what is a human being. Self-portrait has always been a very important theme of painting in western art history. Most of Philip Akkerman’s works are self-portraits. His constantly changing self-portraits reflect an individual's insistent inquiry of its own identity. Akkerman attracts broad attention from museums and collectors. His works are winners of a number of prizes and shown in many major exhibitions.