Group Exhibition
Far and Near, Hearts in Consonance: The Worldview in Painting
2026.05.09 - 06.09
Curated by Wang Jiang
Triumph Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition Far and Near, Hearts in Consonance: The Worldview in Painting, on view from May 9 to June 9, 2026. The exhibition brings together works by eight artists—Ding Liren, Yuan Yunsheng, Wu Weijia, Liang Ying, Ji Dachun, Lou Shenyi, Wang Yabin, and Wang Yaqiang—curated by Wang Jiang.

Centered on the theme of "Far and Near, Hearts in Consonance," the exhibition explores a distinctive path in contemporary Chinese painting that integrates Eastern and Western traditions. The curator emphasizes the "Worldview" embodied in this trajectory—not as an imitation or compromise of any international paradigm, but as an artistic sensibility rooted in indigenous Eastern aesthetics while embracing universal approaches. Within the lineage presented, Yuan Yunsheng and Ding Liren serve as crucial reference points: the former specifically negotiates the relationship between the national and the global, bridging ancient and modern, Chinese and Western; the latter's art originates from the authenticity of folk traditions and individual expression. Their reflections establish the fundamental conceptual framework for the coordinates of this worldview.

In an era saturated with images and excess concepts, "Far and Near, Hearts in Consonance" offers a practice that is neither Westernized nor nostalgically retrograde. The creations of Ding Liren, Yuan Yunsheng, Wu Weijia, Liang Ying, Ji Dachun, Lou Shenyi, Wang Yabin, and Wang Yaqiang traverse between ancient and modern, East and West, imbuing the language of modern art with a kinetic energy that transcends temporal and spatial distances as well as cultural differences. Painting thus becomes a site where the self encounters the world. Moreover, the worldview in painting reveals new possibilities for the subject to find grounding and purpose in a post-globalized context.
Di Liren
Ding Liren, born in 1930 in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, is a professor at the College of Design and Art, Shanghai University of Technology, and a guest professor at Guangdong University of Technology. Although Ding never received formal academic training in fine arts, he developed an early and distinct aesthetic approach that deliberately avoids adherence to any single artistic school. Instead, he draws inspiration equally from diverse painting traditions and folk art forms.

His works are held in the collections of major institutions such as the National Art Museum of China, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Macau. In recent years, Ding Liren has exhibited both in China and internationally, including at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne (Switzerland), the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, Platform China in Beijing, and the Guangdong Museum of Art.
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Yuan Yunsheng
Yuan Yunsheng was born in Nantong, Jiangsu Province on April 4, 1937. Studied under the famous artist Dong Xiwen, Yuan Yunsheng graduated in 1962 from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). His early career was marked by political adversity. Labeled as a "Rightist" in 1957, he underwent re-education at Shuangqiao Farm. His graduation piece, Memories of the Water Village, sparked controversy for its modernist style. Subsequently, he was assigned to work for 18 years at the Workers' Cultural Palace in Changchun, Jilin Province.

During his sketching trip to Xishuangbanna, Yunnan in 1978, Yuan used “lines” as the most potent medium to capture the region's essence. For Yuan, line drawing was not merely observation but an act of liberating vital energy. "I prefer not to sketch preliminaries; I hold a blueprint in my mind and develop it as I draw. This is more meaningful because it is a test for myself." Yuan’s Yunnan Line Drawing Sketch Series garnered significant acclaim for its rhythmic and lyrical quality.​
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Wu Weijia
Wu Weijia, born in 1960 in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, graduated in 1982 from the Oil Painting Department of the Fine Arts School of Nanjing University of the Arts, where he studied under Su Tianci. He currently lives and works in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, teaching at the School of Fine Arts of Nanjing Normal University. He has long been engaged in painting instruction and artistic creation. 

Throughout his artistic career spanning over four decades, Wu Weijia has dedicated himself to painting practices across various media, including oil painting, Chinese painting, and calligraphy, demonstrating exceptional artistic talent and mastery. His works are housed in the collections of several major art institutions, such as the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Jiangsu Art Museum, and the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts.Wu Weijia (b.1960), was born in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, and currently lives and works in Nanjing, China. For over 40 years, his artistic creation has spanned Chinese and Western art forms, achieving excellence in oil painting, watercolor, Chinese painting, calligraphy, and seal - carving. Throughout his artistic career, his style has been diverse yet consistently unique. This style stems from his deep - seated drive for artistic innovation and exploration, combined with his ability to express genuine artistic pleasure. In 1995, Wu Weijia visited the US and Canada with a delegation and exhibited his works there. Over the years, he has been a active presence in the art world, holding solo and group exhibitions in various places such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Jinan, Zibo, Taiwan, and Macau. His works are collected by many important art institutions, including the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Jiangsu Province Art Museum, Nanjing University of the Arts Gallery, and Tianning Zen Temple.
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Liang Ying
Liang Ying was born in Beijing, China in 1961, studied in the Department of Chinese Painting, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts from 1981 to 1982, and studied at the Art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg in Germany from 1983 to 1993, and received an art scholarship from the Rotary Club of Hamburg and the North German State. In 1991 received a Master of Fine Arts.

As a pioneering female artist in Chinese contemporary art, Liang Ying was one of the earliest group of artists who studied in Germany in the 1980s. She is also one of the first established Chinese artists who forgo oil painting in order to focus on ink painting. Whether it is her early series “Diary Liang Ying”, which depicted modern women in urban settings, or her recent series “Immortals and Legends,” Liang Ying has always innovatively combined the compositional elements and contents of German Neo-Expressionism with the brushwork and subject matters of traditional Chinese Painting, transforming them into myriad phenomenal artworks.In these works, she merges concepts, narrative, and painterly expression in one entity. Like many Chinese artists in the 20th century, Liang Ying devotes herself to exploring the possibility of ink painting, hoping to prove to the world that ink painting is still a vital component of today’s contemporary art world.
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Ji Dachun
Ji Dachun was born in 1968 in Nantong, Jiangsu, China. He graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department, Beijing, China in 1993. As one of the most representative Chinese contemporary artists, Ji Dachun is widely noticed for his distinctive personal style. His paintings are witty, humorous, ethereal and tranquil, and full of romantic poetry and Zen. In particular, his choice and persistence in easel painting, in an environment where installations, images, pictures, and multimedia methods are becoming more popular, it highlights its unique expressive charm and profound significance.

After having produced many of his now-widely recognized figurative paintings from his early career, Ji Dachun (b. 1968) begins to gravitate towards acrylic, a medium that is comparatively lighter and less saturated than oil paint.  Initially he was obsessed with the viscous pictorial effect of acrylic, and later on there were his serial explorations of the themes of “Black” and “White”. Throughout this entire process, he has experimented with Payne’s gray—which he considered an unstable pigment color—in terms of how it presents different shades of transparencies, textures, and tonal layers on the canvas.  He experimented so as to grasp the relationship between the subject of paint, the residue, and the image.  Through this project, Ji Dachun endeavors to grasp his own position within the coordination of (art) history and reality and comes up with his own rationales to experiment with—or deconstruct—paint in a perhaps attempt to approximate the boundaries of finite things.

Ji has held solo exhibitions at LudwigMuseum (Koblenz,Germany), MACRO Museo d‘Arte Contemporanea Roma (Rome, Italy), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, China), Kunstmuseum Bern (Bern, Switzerland), Posco Museum (Seoul, South Korea) and other art institutions. His works have been exhibited in the 56th Venice Biennial, 2012 Gwangju Biennale Special Exhibition, The First Triennial of Chinese Arts, 2001 Chengdu Biennale, 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the 1st China Oil Painting Biennale and the 2nd 2ed Annual China Oil Painting Exhibition.
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Lou Shenyi
In December 1973, Lou Shenyi was born in the county town of Fenghui in Shangyu, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. He was admitted to the Affiliated High School of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 and entered the Mural Painting Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA) in 1993. He has been teaching at China Academy of Art (CAA) since his graduation in 1997.

Lou’s painting draws from a broad range of topics benefiting from his childhood reading experience.  Journey to the West, Buddhist sutras,  pastoral sceneries, exotic landscapes, and portraiture are his favourites. After many years of diversified drawing experiments, Lou found his predilection for the rudimentary technique of outlining and colouring, i.e. outlining with markers and colouring with unmixed colours, which brings a concise, powerful, and visually impactful pleasure.

Lou perceives the world with childlike eyes, “I found naivety rather wise: the more superficial it appears, the closer it gets to the profound.”
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Wang Yabin
Wang Yabin was born in Henan Province in 1974 and graduated from the Art Department of Henan Normal University in 1994. Currently lives and works in Zhengzhou, Henan Province and Huangshan, Anhui Province.

As a leading figure in Chinese contemporary painting, Wang Yabin specializes in using western painting techniques to display eastern landscapes and figures. He says, "It is my artistic choice to draw on the forms and languages of Western art with Eastern aesthetic thought and Chinese culture as the core".

His paintings have always presented a rich look and coherent threads, starting from a keen inner experience, incorporating complex thoughts and emotions into the language of painting. Each stage of his works is unique, and he completes the transformation of his artistic language amidst different experiences and perceptions, with varied themes that keep advancing in the midst of extension.
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Wang Yaqiang
Artist Wang Yaqiang was born in Xinxiang, Henan Province in 1977. His works are a combination of sensibility and rationality. His early career as a police office has influenced his character formation and artistic creation. The culture of the "Central Plains", traditional painting and calligraphy, geometic elements, mathmetical symbols, popular patterns and comic strips have all left the marks in Wang Yaqiang's creation.

Wang Yaqiang's works have been exhibited at many important academic institutions nationally and internationally, including National Art Museum of China, Nanjing Museum (Nanjing Art Triennale), Today Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, The Museum of Classic Art, Minsheng Modern Art Museum, Times Art Museum (Beijing), Hive Centre for Contemporary Art, Soka Art Center, RCM Gallery, Aura Gallery, and other major galleries, art centres from New York, Prague, Madrid and elsewhere.

Solo exhibitions: The Specifications of the Tattoo, Museum of the Classic Art, Nanjing (2022); More or Less, Hive Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013). Group exhibitions: Dark Energy - Related Mystical Poetic Metaphor, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2012); Lust and Love of the Young and liberated, 798 Space, Beijing (2012); Reshaping History, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2010); Asian Landmark - Toyota Art Project, lberia Cente for Contemporary, Beijing (2010); Invisible Wings, Beijing Times Art Museum, Beijing (2010); Mine Mind-Asian Contemporary New Art, Soka Art Centre Beijing, Beijing (2009); China Box - The Fourth Prague Biennale, Czech Republic Prague Carlin Hall Prague (2009); Japan meets China our Future reflected in Contemporary Art, Minsheng Contemporary Art Space, Beijing, China (2009); Art Asian Miami, U.S.A (2009); Silent Scenery: Fun Art Space, Beijing (2008); Germinarors, China Square, New York (2008); Notes of Conception: A Local Narrate Chinese Contemporary Painting, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2008); Find Myself, Minsheng Contemporary Art Space, Shanghai (2008); Asia - Nanjing Triennial, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing (2008).
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Curator
Curator
Wang Jiang
Wang Jiang is an independent curator and art critic. He is also the founder and creative director of Inch Office, a master's supervisor at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and a special editorial board member of the Chinese Contemporary Art Yearbook.

To date, Wang Jiang has curated over one hundred contemporary art exhibitions and has edited and designed numerous art publications. His research and writing topics include: the revival and narrative reconstruction of figurative painting; material experiments and the turn toward new materialism; the infiltration of screen culture into easel painting; the tension between globalization and Eastern aesthetics; the visualization of social movements and collective memory; and the deconstruction and rewriting of art historical genealogies.

His art criticism has been widely published in professional media outlets such as Artnet, Artnews, Artbaba, ArtAlpha, and Hi Art, as well as on the official platforms of major art institutions. His recent critical essays on individual artists include: Yuan Yunsheng, Ma Kelu, Wu Weijia, Meng Luding, Wang Yuping, Liu Fengzhi, Wang Yin, Yang Maoyuan, Mao Yan, Ma Ke, Wang Mai, Huang Yuxing, Wang Yabin, Qin Qi, Chen Yujun, Guan Yinfu, Yan Bing, Xia Yu, Gao Yu, Qi Wenzhang, Chen Baihao, Yan Shilin, Ge Hui, Huang Liang, Lü Song, Xu Hongxiang, Zhong Wei, and Liu Haichen.

Since 2024, Wang Jiang has been conducting in-depth interviews, research, and systematic mapping of the "Screen Generation," endeavoring to construct the core concepts and theoretical framework of post-screen painting on this basis.