Midsummer Group Exhibition「ECLECTIC」

Ginkgo Space (Shanghai) will present the summer group exhibition "Eclectic" on August 16, 2025. This exhibition brings together eight Chinese artists deeply rooted in their Chinese cultural identity, including Shen Chen, Wu Shan, Song Ling, Du Jie, Chen Ruo Bing, Fu Xiaotong, Dong Dawei, and Li Shun.

The exhibition aims to use the cultural concept of "Eclecticism" to present artists' works of reconstruction, translation, and fusion in the context of their visual and philosophical experiences. Eclecticism is not negative or passive; rather, it tends to observe and draw from different cultural traditions with a more macroscopic perspective, situated between sensibility and rationality. Artists refine and internalize their own visual language and cultural expressions amid differences, which is not only limited to the canvas, but also incorporates the surrounding social and cultural environment into the works.

This exhibition is curated by Ginkgo Space, inviting the audience to explore and engage with the works of eight artists — to consider where the logic of their artistic creations is rooted; how they use artistic language to respond to the permeation and integration of Eastern and Western, traditional and contemporary cultures; and how they express certain characteristics of this era and persistently pursue their own aesthetic attitude.

Shen Chen

Born in China in 1955, Shen Chen is a New York based artist. He began his art education in high school and continued his training at Shanghai Art College (previously known as the Shanghai “5.7” Art School).  He moved to Beijing after earning his BFA from the Shanghai Academy of Theater in 1982. In 1988, he came to the United States on a fellowship as artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Later that year, he moved to New York upon receiving an exchange student fellowship from the Studio School of Painting and Sculpture.  He continued his studies at Boston University on an MFA scholarship the following year. He has lived in New York since1991.

In the 1980s, Shen Chen was one of China’s pioneers of Chinese abstract painting and experimental ink painting. He was an active member of “Art Salon” (an underground art movement). In 1978, he organized an experimental exhibition “Wild Rose” while he was still in college. In 1984, he held his first solo exhibition at the China Journalists Association in Beijing. Since then, his works have been displayed in art galleries around the world, and have been collected by many art galleries, art foundations and private collectors worldwide.

As a pioneer of experimental ink painting in the 1980s,  Shen Chen began the process of "de-inking" in the 1990s, replacing ink with acrylic paint diluted with water, switching from Xuan paper to linen canvas, and using traditional Chinese brushes to apply paint evenly on the canvas. He extracted the brushwork and brush intention implied in  traditional Chinese painting, presenting a sense of "abstraction" and transcendent spirituality through structured colors and lines. In his abstract practice, he pushed the study of materials, forms, and space, while seeking his personal spiritual footing in  what seemed to be monotonous and repetitive work.

Shen Chen once said that his paintings are not about representing visible whiteness, but rather using different shades of gray to make the illusion of white appear. Throughout his artistic career spanning over 50 years, he has always pursued a state of creation that elevates his technique to the level of spiritual sublimation.

Wu Shan

Born in 1960 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Wu Shan graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts with a BFA in 1982 and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in 1986. In 2006, he returned to China and began teaching at the China Academy of Art. Currently. He currently lives and works in Hangzhou

After internalizing the language of Western art, Wu Shan translates the images through the worldview of Chinese ink painting, allowing the lines to communicate with the lacquer surface, creating an abstract oriental context with lacquer as the medium. In the specific process of creation, he uses meticulous brushwork, each stroke is extremely strong and rhythmic, grasping the essence of the relationship between lacquer and line, so that the picture exudes a compact and harmonious relationship. Through decades of exploration and practice, the artist has built a holistic relationship between the lines and the lacquer, resulting in a larger space that invites the viewer to read.

Wu Shan's major exhibitions include: "Wu Shan: Drifting", Ginkgo Space (Shenzhen, China, 2025); “Wu Shan: Shan”, Banri Art Museum (Shantou, China, 2024); “Wu Shan”, Beijing Platform China Contemporary Art Institute (2020); “Winding Path”, Beijing Platform China Contemporary Art Institute (2018), and has also held exhibitions at the Lawrence Perrin Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Matthew Flood New Vision Gallery in Wisconsin, the East-West Contemporary Gallery in Chicago, the South Bend Museum of Art in Indiana, and the Merwin Gallery at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, among other galleries.

Song Ling

Born in Hangzhou in 1961, Song Ling graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in 1984 and joined the Zhejiang Academy of Painting as a professional painter. In 1985, he participated in the “85 New Tide”, in which he predicted the contradictions of human nature in the era of industrialization with the cold and grim technique of surrealism. In 1986, together with Zhang Peiqiong, Geng Jianyi, and Wang Qiang, he founded one of the most important art groups in the early period of Chinese contemporary art, the “Pool Society”, and created the series of “Meaningless Choice,” which was representative and influential at the time, and became one of the most important artists of the 85 New Wave art movement. In 1988, Song Ling moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he participated in the earliest exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art, held seventeen solo exhibitions across the country, and was selected as one of the most noteworthy Australian contemporary young artists. Although he has lived in Australia for a long time, Song Ling has also been paying close attention with the contemporary art ecology in China. He returned to China in 2013 and established a studio in Hangzhou.

In recent years, the Song Ling has fully expressed contemporary art through ink painting. "Especially after having more exposure to Western art, I have gained a new understanding of ink painting. I feel that there are still many aspects within Chinese ink painting that can be explored and delved into." Using the ink wash technique of Chinese painting as the creative foundation, the artist did not stop exploring even in terms of language. The artist gradually developed two directions from images mainly featuring specific animals: one is to re-transform traditional Chinese painting, and the other is to subtly alter existing materials. In his view, what matters is not the ink itself, but the ideas it conveys and the visual logic it narrates -- what is important is the presence of knowledge and perception.In the consumer era, the virtual space of materialism is filled with noise and coldness. Only the instinctive ink painting narration can filter out some warmth for it, and all of this has shaped a just-right delicate imbalance, just like this worst yet best era.

His works have been collected by numerous public institutions and art museums, including the Australia Artbank, ANZ Bank, White Rabbit Gallery, Deakin University, USC Pacific Asia Museum, Long Museum, START MUEUM, and Yuz Foundation, among others. In 2014 and 2015, Song Ling held major retrospective exhibitions “Ghost In The Mirror – Song Ling 1985-2013” at Today Art Museum in Beijing and Zhejiang Art Museum, respectively. In 2023, he presented a decade retrospective exhibition “I’m also starting to have desires” at HOW Art Museum in Shanghai.

Du Jie

Born in 1968 in Xiangyang, Hubei Province. She first studied physics and then devoted her interest and energy to the practice of painting.

Du Jie's artistic creation process and inspiration origins are extensive and diverse, and she expresses her inner demands in a unique way. Before the work begins, she does not envision any picture in advance in her mind, but lets the brush pull her hand and move freely on the canvas. Her works, whether on canvas or on paper, walk on the picture from a single point, and take the length of time to make each work as the title of the work, Her life is "wasted" in this simple and complicated work, every simple stroke, line, and turning point in the work is like every moment of life, day after day, year after year, more and more complicated. But full of unknown possibilities. Du Jie's works are not only idea, but also an experience of life. In the natural transformation of simplicity and complexity, the dialectical relationship between nothing and existence, emptiness and color are revealed.

Major solo exhibitions include: “No Place for Subjectivity to Stand ”,Ginkgo  Space, Beijing (2021); “Sixteen Cycles”, Ginkgo Space, Beijing (2018); “There Will Be a Time Afterward”, Mailer Gallery, Beijing (2008), etc. Her works have been shown in many important group exhibitions in China and abroad, including “I Favor Life - The Layton Weiss Collection”, Museum of Modern Art Wieselberg, Berlin, Germany (2016); “Out of the Peony Pavilion:Contemporary Chinese Women's Art Exhibition”, Russian National Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2016); ‘Slow Art:Chinese Abstraction’, Kunsthalle Reichlinghausen, Recklinghausen, Germany (2012); “Slow Art:Chinese Abstraction”, Singer Museum, Laren, The Netherlands (2011); ‘Ten Years of the White Rabbit’, White Rabbit Art Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2011); ”Mahjong --Sigg Chinese Contemporary Art Collection”, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2005); ‘Rosary and Brushstrokes’, Beijing-Tokyo Art Project, Beijing (2003), etc. Du Jie's works have been included in many exhibitions. Du Jie's works are included in a number of heavyweight private and public collections, including: Olberlech Foundation, Germany; Leiden-Weiss Collection, Germany; UBS Collection; White Rabbit Gallery, Australia; Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany; Ullrichk Collection, Switzerland; Vorried Collection, Holland; and M+ Art Museum, Hong Kong.

Fu Xiaotong

Born in 1976 in Shanxi, China, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts as an undergraduate in 2000, and graduated from the Department of Experimental Art of the Central Academy of Fine Arts as a master's student in 2013. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Beijing. In recent years, she has used a variety of media, including rice paper, installation, sculpture and performance, and borrowed the name of the ancient Egyptian god of chaos, ‘NUN’, to explore the visualisation of the social structure and spiritual beliefs of ancient mankind.

Fu Xiaotong abandons the traditional material of brush and ink on the thickened handmade rice paper, and instead uses the unique female method of pricking holes in the paper to create her works. Through an intensive, cumulative process, she slowly creates images that are as macroscopic as mountains or as microscopic as life. Through the physical “repetition” of pricking, the artist reinvents her own subjectivity and gives her works lasting power through a new material language practice.

Fu Xiaotong's solo exhibitions in recent years include: NUN-6 (Ginkgo Space, Shenzhen, 2024); NUN-3 (Ginkgo Space, Beijing, 2022); NUN-3 (Chambers Fine Art, New York, 2022). She was awarded the inaugural Asian Female Artist Award in 2019, presented jointly by the Sovereign Asian Art Foundation and Vogue Hong Kong. Her works have been collected by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Fidelity Investments Group, Boston, USA; Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; White Rabbit Art Museum, Sydney, Australia; and Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China.

Chen Ruo Bing

Born in 1970 in China, currently lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He studied at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in the Chinese Painting Department from 1988 to 1991. Subsequently, from 1992 to 1998, he studied and graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. In 1993, he received Advancement Award of Hedwig und Robert Samuel Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2000, he was awarded the Josef und Anni Albers Foundation Artist Residency Grant in the United States. In 2013, he had a residency at the Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwangju-si, South Korea. In 2014, he stayed at the Irish residence of Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll. In the summer of 2016, he had a residency at the Laforêt family estate on Lake Maggiore, Italy. In 2020, he completed a Healing Art Project for the COVID-19 ward at the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2023, he collaborated on a Creative Identity Art Project with Tiffany & Co. His works are held in public institutions such as the Shanghai Art Museum (now the China Art Palace), Beijing Today Art Museum, Hubei Art Museum, Bochum Museum in Germany, Düsseldorf Art Palace Museum in Germany, Middelburg University Art Museum in the United States, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea, and the Tottori Prefectural Museum in Japan.

Chen Ruo Bing's signature creative language is the relationship between light, color, and sphere. In recent years, Chen Ruo Bing's creative practice has been a submerged blend of traditional Chinese painting techniques, such as rendering layers on top of each other, and the awareness of colour. As the artist says, light is the awareness and movement of consciousness, which is always in the moment. Light is peace, in the moment of wisdom and perfection. It is the reflection of nature. Light (color) grants Chen Ruo Bing glimpses of clarity of mind. The diffused light serves as the "inhale" in his paintings, while the balance between forms constitutes the "exhale"; this rhythmic exchange infuses the paintings with life. Chen Ruo Bing explores the abilities of modelling of various shapes, employing them according to different visual psychological experiences, allowing them to resonate and converse with each other. Shapes such as cylinders, squares, ellipses, rings, rectangles, and others dialogue within the paintings. Circles represent heaven, squares represent earth, and by facilitating dialogue between them, circles are transformed into squares. Chen Ruo Bing believes that the establishment and extension of order within the composition lead to the existence of abstraction.

Dong Dawei

Born in Dalian, China, in 1981. He graduated from the ENSA Bourges, France, in 2011 and currently lives and works between the East Fifth Ring Road and the East Sixth Ring Road in Beijing. His works draw inspiration primarily from the painting history and have made significant contributions to conceptual art. His works have been widely exhibited in art institutions in China and abroad, including the Beijing UCCA , Taikang Space, A4 Art Museum, M Woods Museum, HOW Art Museum, CAFA Art Museum, Hubei Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Brussels Boghossian Foundation, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and Hospice Saint-Roch Museum in Issoudun, France, etc.

Dong Dawei draws inspiration from traditional Chinese landscape (shan shui) painting and Western frescoes while innovating contemporary landscape painting. He reconfigures ancient scenes of people travelling in the mountains into flat or distant diagrams read from a contemporary perspective, such as mountains, water, and clouds. Additionally, he innovatively combines the materiality of painting with natural themes, using the hydration reaction of plaster to permanently fix colours within it (similar to how frescoes preserve fresh colours). Compared to works created on canvas or paper, Dong Dawei’s new works not only create the image but also create the “wall surface”, further concretely deepening his concept of the materiality of painting: simultaneously creating painting as an image and painting as a material and object.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Fresh Nature (Ginkgo Space, Shenzhen, 2025), Metaphors We Live By (Tong Gallery+Projects, Beijing, 2024), Dong Dawei: The Code Of Concepts (Jing Hope Art Center, Sanya, 2024), Fractals: Dong Dawei 2012—2023 (N3 Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2023), Back to Qinglv (Tong Gallery+Projects, Beijing, 2022), Element And Pixel (Enclave Contemporary, Shenzhen, 2021), Landscape Portrait ( HDM Gallery, Beijing, 2020) and so on.

Li Shun

Born in 1988 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the School of Intermedia Art of the China Academy of Art. He currently lives and works in Hangzhou.

Li Shun's works in recent years are always presented in the form of "fragments", which are "broken chapters" with overlapping meanings. The "fracture" in his works is reflected in two aspects: in terms of creation, whether he mimics classic Chinese calligraphy and painting with light marks or paints images on the page, the material is extracted from their original coherent whole, to complete the visual restructuring; in terms of the content of his works, the literary books he uses as the background of the picture, or the images downloaded from the Internet, are not only fragments floating in the virtual world, but also classics that are constantly transmitted and extended. The reassembled fragments produce new ideas because of the interweaving and dislocation of meanings.

The fragments in Li Shun's works not only correspond to the fragmental information of the Internet era, but also his way of responding to the traditional changes - art, words and events, once out of the original context, will inevitably become constantly distorted and interpreted---everyone interprets and transmits it in their own perspective. In the new artworks, Li Shun shows the imagination and possibility of the change of tradition and reality from a big historical perspective.

Li Shun's works have been exhibited by Guangdong Art Museum, White Rabbit Contemporary Art Museum in Australia, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo University of the Arts Art Museum, How Art Museum in Shanghai, Long Museum in Shanghai, Tichy Ocean Foundation in Switzerland, Chengdu Zhi Art Museum, Beijing Exhibition Center, Zhejiang Art Museum, Serbia Bell Art Museum, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, and Charles E.Sinn Library of Connecticut College. He has been shortlisted for the SOVEREIGN Outstanding Asian Art Award 2023, selected for the Annual List of Chinese Photography in 2020, the TOP20 Chinese Contemporary Photography Awards in 2021 and 2017, and was nominated for the 2020 Jimei Arles Discovery Award and the Silver Award for the opening exhibition of the Beijing Minsheng Modern Art Museum in 2015.