JIANG DAHAI: Diffusion

After graduating in 1986 from the oil painting department at the Central Academy of Arts, in Beijing, Dahai went to France to study Western art. His shift from Realism to Modernism and assimilation of Eastern and Western Arts took almost two decades leading the artist to create his own form of abstraction. Leaving France in 2008 to return to China, he became Professor at the Central Academy of Arts. Jiang is now one of the most prominent Chinese artists.

In his famous cloud paintings, the artist composes his canvases with a modern method of stippling all-over the canvas, echoing the action-painting of the American Expressionists, building his composition with up to 15 layers of paint. The art of Jiang however is the opposite of this movement, aiming instead to re-create the essence of the Chinese aesthetic and meditation. Through his clouds paintings, the illusion of vaporous mists recalls the traditional Chinese landscape, in his canvases Jiang finds the subtle balance between the emptiness and the openness, the saturation and the void.

The artist now works and lives between Paris and Beijing. His most recent solo exhibitions include a retrospective in 2015 at The National Museum of History, Taipei in Taiwan and in 2009 at the Today Art Museum, Beijing, China and has exhibited at The Musée des Arts asiatiques - Guimet, Paris.