Pan Jian ( b. 1975, China.) is a thoughtful and committed painter. In his exploration of shadow, the artist distils the relationship between light and dark to its purest form, resulting in an arresting body of work that challenges the viewer to wander through his varied forest scenes that have an innate spiritual quest. Pan Jian’s artistic process first draws inspiration from literature and poetry as well as actual landscapes, gradually transforming what he has seen into the imagined scenes that he presents on each canvas. He is constantly exploring and inventing different painting techniques to conjure deep feelings of harmony, melancholy, stillness and movement. The landscapes are therefore both real and imagined, a dichotomy that is reflected in the concept that although a shadow has no tangible content, the image presented is still able to move the viewer, provoking an emotional response. The Pandemic changed the way that Pan Jian viewed painting. He started to study the way Japanese ukiyo- e contrasting colour palettes held a work together and then began to adopt colours from nature and reality and turned them into his own reality with his own colours. The colours come from the real world yet the result is unreal. Pan Jian graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Art where he is now teaching. He recently had a major exhibition at the Himalaya Museum in Shanghai. His works are part of the Hong Kong M+ Museum collection, the Yuz Museum Collection, the Burger Collection, among others. He lives and works in Beijing and Xi’an.
