From November 2nd to December 1st, 2019, Long Museum (West Bund) will present "At the Moment: Li Guijun Solo Exhibition", curated by the famous curator and professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts – Zhaoli. The exhibition systematically displays Li Guijun’s recent works. He is one of the most influential realistic painters and the representative of the third generation of realistic painting. 

Li Guijun was born in Beijing in 1964. In 1980, he entered the Central Academy of Fine Arts to study painting. In 1988, he graduated from the First Studio of the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, under the tutelage of Jin Shangyi and Yang Feiyun. As early as his freshman year, he showed his talents with his creation "140 Studio", participated in the "Advancing Chinese Youth Art Exhibition" and won awards. In the mid-1980s, Li Guijun also participated in the wave of Chinese modern art, but for him, he had neither experienced the "Cultural Revolution" and the background of educated youth, nor the exotic curious ideas. Therefore, painting people of this era became his artistic path of independent exploration.

Since the 1990s, "Contemporary Interpretation of Women's Beauty" gradually formed Li Guijun's painting style. He pursues ideals and simple pictures in a creative way that is beyond life. "Adolescent girl" has become the prominent theme of this period. The refined painting shows the artist’s super strong control of language and his aesthetic imagination. 

In the new century, Li Guijun uses art to connect with the humanistic situation during the historical classic period, that is to say, the language of painting is the display of human brilliance and creativity, is the communication between human emotion and spirit. In recent works, the artist has gradually focused on the expression of women’s "spirit" and "beauty". The interpretation of "spirituality" is further explained by the artist: "'God' and 'color' are what I value most in painting. The painting is lifeless if it does not have any colour".

"At the moment" as the theme of this exhibition is a concentrated display of the artist’s painting style and creative thoughts. Li Guijun has a classical relationship with the painting language. "Language is the medium. Whether the spiritual world can be conveyed is closely related to the quality of language. Language itself must have aesthetic value. The so-called emotional world and spirituality depend on visual language to exist." He holds the belief that the eternal value and mission of painting is transferred from the eye to the heart. He opposed the painting rules based on the 19th century realism system, and admired the European Renaissance art. How to paint with a perspective and attitude is not only the question of the era faced by Li Guijun as an artist, but also a response to the value of realistic painting in this era.

For the first time, "At the Moment" presents Li Guijun's philosophical questioning of the "life of Dasein" in the form of an exhibition. After a long artistic exploration, he reconstructed and merged Western classical culture and Chinese traditional interest from a modern standpoint, pursued the expression of the "beauty" of life itself with superb realistic language, and used female life to show the gaze, posture and mood belonged to that era. Birds, fish and flowers that repeatedly depicted in traditional Chinese paintings are introduced into the painting, pulling the characters in the paintings away from the original space, breaking the tranquil and orderly classical situation. He brings the western classical, eastern tradition and contemporary spirit together into the same painting, opening a new possible route for realistic painting. 

This exhibition not only presents the representative works of artists, but also displays the latest exploration masterpieces. Li Guijun concentrates on capturing a certain classic visual moment, only to expand the instantaneousness of nature and life into the visual eternity of painting, as he said: "Painting is the trace of human life".