Visual Arts

On the Road is a unique, annual project initiated in 2014 by the Guan Shanyue Art Museum,Shenzhen, here seen in its 2018 version. The process involves 15 curators, art critics and scholars, from major institutions, art schools and museums throughout China and Hong Kong, proposing a selection of promising young Chinese artists. This collective curatorial process results in the creation of an impressive “nomination exhibition” from which a final selection of the best 20-30 works is then made.

This year, for the first time in its history, the annual On the Road exhibition is dedicated to New Media Art. With the title Young Media Artists in China, the 30 or so works selected by the nominating committee (along with 6 contributions by the faculty of the School of Creative Media, CityU) provide a stimulating and exciting overview of the media art scene across China today, and demonstrates how young Chinese artists are exploring, manipulating, and playing with media, often combining both older and ‘newer’ media to new ends.

During the past 10 years the new media art scene has grown in size and quality in a country highly receptive to innovation. China’s own rich and unique history of image-making, painting and calligraphy, offers a tradition where time and space, black and white, sound and silence are often juxtaposed in a subtle dialogue made up of contrasts and complicity. Building on this tradition, with diverse and modern sensibilities, young Chinese media artists are digging new paths that leave firm tracks across the ever-changing field of contemporary art.