Look up at the Starlit Sky  by Chen Wenling Photo: Courtesy of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum

Banality of Evil  by Chen Wenling Photo: Courtesy of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum

As part of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum's case study series, a new exhibition featuring Chinese contemporary artist Chen Wenling's recent works created since 2006 offers a rare chance for visitors to see how the magic realism he is well-known for has evolved over the years in his sculptures. 

According to exhibition curator Lü Peng, Abel of Duration, which features installation works, sculptures and manuscripts, includes three sections: Personal Experience, Human Desire and Community Illusion.  

"Artist Chen Wenling's art creation path lines up with Henri Bergson's notion of duration, which he regarded all living beings as existing in a duration, and these durations manifest the nature of being itself," the curator wrote in the preface to the exhibition. 

In the Personal Experience section, there is an evident link between the artist's personal life and his art. For instance, being attacked by a group of criminals by the seaside is the origin and inspiration for his Red Man series, a metaphor for the period of social evolution in which the bottom society is restructured. This representation of the struggles of bottom society individuals became the first "duration" of his art career. 

In the Human Desire section, his attention is no longer limited to personal experience but more steered toward society as a whole. In recent years, the artist has shifted his attention from individual lives to universal meaning and the destiny of humanity as a community. 

In his Universe and Community series, his artistic creations represent a bigger picture of life and the interaction of civilizations. 

Fan Di'an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said that the exhibition connects the future and the past, which can be seen as a new beginning for the artist to express himself through different mediums besides sculptures.