This is the first cooperation for the Cultural Institute of Macau Special Administrative Region and the Art Asia Foundation of Hong Kong to organize a Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition of Mr. Chen Keng from the Guangzhou Art Academy.

Mr. Chen Keng is a painter who specializes in depicting scenery and the everyday life of  Guangdong Province.  His recent four series of works “Memories of Southern Region”, “Village Chat”, “The Banana Smell” and “Livelihood at The Sea”, totally twenty-one oil paintings to be exhibited at the temporary exhibition hall of the Museum of Macau. This exhibition will bring to the small city of Macau much needed a freshness and will offer us an alternative from the noisy and polluted city, and from the fully air-conditioned office. In the meantime, it also brings us back to the countryside of the Pearl River Delta region. Let us enjoy the hot sunshine from the South and return to the natural and simple life we onced lived.

The art of Guangdong Province has a long history. It adopted the essence of Chinese art and manipulated the ideas of western art, by combing both ideas to create a new movement in Chinese art.  Since the beginning, Macau possessed an advantageous geographical location, having been in touch with the westerners for the longest period, many western paintings arrived at Macau. In addition, before and after the Revolution of 1911, many idealistic youths one after another studied art abroad, and thus western oil paintings gradually developed and established itself in Guangdong Province. Since China’s reform and open door policy, a large number of talented artists with different styles appeared in the art of Guangdong Province.  They had written with a  rich colour and a profound chapter to the history of Chinese art. Mr. Chen Keng is one of the oil painters who recently revealed excellent achievements in the Guangdong Provincial art.

In recent years, there were many people who first learnt oil painting technique, and only afterward traditional Chinese painting. However, Mr. Chen Keng is doing the opposite. He graduated from the faculty of the traditional Chinese painting of Guangzhou Art Academy in 1989, and after seven years, he began his post-graduate course in oil painting at the Guangzhou Art Academy.  Since Mr. Chen has a strong Chinese painting background, when he learnt oil painting again, the resuult of his works was remarkable. He firmly realized the method of manipulating western ideas and applying them to the Chinese technique. His oil paintings do not have a foreign taste, but are real local Chinese oil paintings - oil paintings in Canton style. His works can be classified as the 21st century school in Guangdong Provincial Art.

The unique feature of Mr. Chen's works is with a rich flavor of life in the countryside.  He can absord the speciality of the people's customs and livelihood from Guangdong Province.  He personally loves the villages at the Pearl River Delta region, thus his oil paintings depict the ethnological culture of Guangdong Province.  From his paintings, we suddenly realized the night breezes with fish smell of the Macau's inner harbour, the smoke of the fishmen's boats and different customs that have disappeared along with the city's development.  With such a heavy burden and long road to achieve, the Museum of Macau and Macau's painters will certainly be rewarded by this enlightening Exhibition of Mr. Chen.  It has also been an objective for the Cultural Institute to organize this exhibition at the Museum of  Macau.

Finally, the Cultural Institute would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the cooperation and recommendation of the Asia Art Foundation to organize this exhibition.

After finishing the collecting and sorting out of Chinese oil paintings in the early days, the Art Asia Foundation had published and exhibited most of them. In recent years, we began to concentrate on the development of modern Chinese oil painting creations, and thus made preparations for the Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Oil Paintings.

As early as in 1994, our members had already taken part in the preparatory work for the Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Oil Paintings at the Art Museum in Hong Kong University. This was the first time for an overseas museum to collect modern Chinese oil paintings, which would produce a profound effect.

Great changes have taken place to Chinese oil painting production in the past ten years. Just as our artist consultant Mr. John Yu put it, lots of new schools of painting appeared one after another. Among these are the “Art of the Wounded” in Sichun Province in the late 70s, the school of Countryside Painting in Henan and Shandong Provinces, as well as the New Trend, the Academic Style, the Post-Academic Style and the Neozoic Era in Beijing and Shanghai. There appeared at the same time a great many of new oil painters, and Chinese oil painting had attracted the whole world's attention.

Works by all the influential young painters from all over the country, such as Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, were gathered on display on the Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Oil Paintings. Exhibitions of purely academic nature and lectures on these works were organized in Hong Kong, Macau, etc. Meanwhile, a memorial picture album is to be published, too. These exhibitions and lectures, organized by the Art Asia Foundation in Hong Kong and co-sponsored by all exhibition institutes, reflected the spirit of time as well as new developments in fine arts after the handover of Hong Kong and Macau to the motherland.

The Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Chen Keng is the first one in this series, shortly after which there will be the Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Xue Zhiguo, the Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Xu Wexin, and so on. The Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Chen Keng had won energetic support from the Cultural Institute and the Macau Museum in Macau SAR, China, we are here to express our sincerest thanks to them. It is also my hope that we could cooperate with each other in a closer way in future, and provide better cultural and artistic services for Hong Kong and Macau people.

Great Changes in the World,Smells in the Countryside –

Briefings on painting works by Chen Keng

It was in the spacious exhibition hall of Guangdong Art Gallery. Two oil paintings by Mr. Chen Keng on this year’s Provincial Art Exhibition impressed people with a rich flavor of life in the countryside of the Pearl River Delta region.

As a matter of fact, I have already seen in Chen Keng’s painting room recent years a lot of works trying to display the open country and wind from the sea in the southern part of China. Cutting off bananas, rice riping in the fields, the coming of fishing season, tremendous sea waves, picking up shellfish, drawing a net, etc, all these themes were common in his works. Such oil paintings typically characterized by the beautiful village views always reminds us of the works by the famous French painter Millet, which were best known for their vivid display of the simple and unaffected village life in France. All Mr. Chen’s paintings can definitely mould our temperament.

What forms a striking contrast to this is that Chen Keng has produced a series of works with the old Guangzhou City as their subject matter. Gate carvings, old-fashioned wooden chairs, large houses etc, were used to express the city-dwellers' nostalgic feelings over the past during the course of great changes and various reforms.

Both the paintings expressing the old-timers’ nostalgia in Guangzhou City and those displaying the working life in the countryside of the Pearl River Delta region share on common feature, i.e., they were all based on the author’s great enthusiasm and profound emotions put into daily life.

The eulogy on the laboring people in the Pearl River Delta region, the nostalgia of old Guangzhou City, both these are connected with the artist's feeling of homeland. The following are what he said in an essay titled Looking for a Homeland: Homeland is an inflexibility towards Nature, is a spiritual sustenance of this earthly world, is a wish beyond material objects. It is a perfect state resulting from getting through lots of difficulties during a long period of time. Only when you have a prosperous homeland in your deep heart can you live a rich and colorful life. Appreciate Mr. Chen’s paintings after you read his words, you will certainly get to understand the connotations of his works.

Mr. Chen’s recent works really impressed us profoundly. And several years ago, he has produced a series of traditional Chinese paintings taking an anchor as their subject. The big anchor made people recall their past experiences, sweet or bitter, successful or unsuccessful. This series of paintings made such a great impact on us that I still remember them deeply on my mind. He is good both at traditional Chinese painting and oil painting. Before he was admitted to the Department of Traditional Chinese Painting, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, his oil paintings began to attract attention on exhibitions at both provincial and municipal levels. After graduation, he put more enthusiasm into oil painting, besides his efforts in the field of traditional Chinese painting.

His efforts for so many years finally led to great achievements. His works have been selected to display on International Youth Year China Youth Arts Exhibition, Hong Kong International Arts Exhibition, National Sports Arts Exhibition, the Provincial and Municipal Arts Exhibitions, etc. He has also won a lot of awards, such as the first Chinese Comic Trips Golden Ring Award, the Top Ten Works of Chinese Comic Trips, Excellent Arts Works Award at both provincial and municipal levels. He is now a painter working with Guangzhou Art Academy, a member of Guangdong Provincial Fine Arts Society, a member of the standing committee of Guangzhou Municipal Fine Arts Society, vice Secretary General of the Youth Fine Arts Association. He is still young and has still a long way to go, it is my sincerest hope that he will make greater achievements in the future.