The Second Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Prints raised its curtain at Today Art Museum last week. The two-week-long exhibition includes three parts: a group exhibition, Fang Lijun's solo prints exhibition and Gu Yuan's solo exhibition. 

It, one of the museum's most important academic exhibitions, aims to showcase the development of Chinese contemporary prints every two years since 2009. 

"To be honest, print paintings, used to be very popular in China, developed less well than oil paintings. Just one simple example, there are only few shops to sell the print painting tools," said the curator Li Fan, also deputy director of print department at China Central Academy of Fine Arts. 

Chinese modern prints started from the woodcut campaign initiated by great writer Lu Xun in 1931. After nearly the development of decades, a number of Chinese artists have left their names by various styles prints. The exhibition showcases artwork from 24 of them including Xu Bing. 

"We don't only exhibit these prints, but also add multiple art forms like audio, video and digital prints. Instead of offering the most innovative exhibition, we prefer to allow the visitors to have more time thinking about prints," said Li. 

It is also the first time for artist Fang Lijun to showcase his print works. He is always well-known as an oil painter. But in fact, he has been working on prints for many years. In his works like 1999.2.1 and 2003.2.1, he still portrayed a bald man, the signature figure in his paintings. All of Guyuan's woodcut prints during his stay in Yan'an are also exhibited for the very first time. 

When: until August 19

Where: Exhibition Hall 1, Group Exhibition; Exhibition Hall 2, Specially Invited Exhibition: Woodcut Prints by Gu Yuan in Yan'an

Contact: 5876-0600