Chongqing - Trace, and Presence Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition opened at Yuelai Art Museum, featuring more than 160 art pieces from 10 artists, including oil paintings and installations. The exhibition, which runs until September 4, reflects issues currently faced by Chinese artists and their thoughts on art.

The concept of trace highlights that contemporary art should follow its natural development path and that artists should defend their standpoint of art. It also links to the continuous evolution of art pieces such as languages, styles, and schemas and the issues of artistic standpoint and cultural identity.

The idea of presence suggests that artists should always conduct dialogues with realistic, contemporary, and local culture and provide artistic insights and visual wisdom to answer to the cultural reality and spiritual pursuits of the time.

He Guiyan, the curator of the exhibition, said different languages and ideas of artists featured in the exhibition reveal some fundamental characteristics of Chinese contemporary art creations in recent years, which are the changing directions from the grand narrative to the micro-narrative, from elite art to art consumption, from cultural critique to critique of language, from international perspectives to local logic.

The exhibition gathers pieces created by artists over the years. It is a way to reveal an artist's logic of creation and helps the audience understand the artist's growth path and current mindset, according to Guo Jin, a local artist who teaches at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Guo joins the exhibition with his signature oil paintings, including Gifts on The Tree from 2009 and three sets of children's portraits. His recent installation piece, The Other World, is also on display.

The concept of idealism and time are extensively embedded in Guo's work. "Children are innocent subjects, which I take as the embodiment of my pursuit of idealism," he explains that the flow of time creates the distance between us and our childhood, which mirrors the unattainable idealism and makes it possible for aesthetic value to grow.

(This article is written by Guo Shuyu, Liangjiang New Area Media Center)