Dai Guangyu is a self-taught artist born and raised in 1955 in a family of scholars in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.
Since childhood Dai Guangyu has studied calligraphy, painting and literature and his career as a contemporary artist includes his long experience as a visual and performative artist, curator and cultural critic, and poet.
His work involves the history of Chinese art, the culture of ink painting, as well as Chinese poetry and politics.
In 1985, Dai Guangyu became part of the revolutionary movement New Wave, soon becoming the leader of what develops in Southwest China, after becoming a leader of the Sichuan artistic avant-garde scene, which proves to be very stimulating and perfect for the development of its creative purpose.
During this period he took part in several exhibitions including, in 1986, “Red Yellow Blue – Young Artists of Sichuan”, the first modern art exhibition in the Sichuan province, at the Sichuan Art Gallery.
In 1989 he participated in the historic China Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and after the end of the 1989 student movement protests, when Chinese art entered a depressed and withdrawn state, Dai Guangyu continued his active interventionist work, curating exhibitions and public performance interventions far from the capital.
In the 1990s, Dai Guangyu discovered artistic performance, which employs the body as a key artistic medium.
The artist has found this artistic medium very interesting and very suitable for expressing himself, artistically speaking, as it allows him to be powerful in movement, incisive in meaning, radical and transitory.
With Dai Guangyu, performance and artistic activities such as conceptual art had found their mentor.
In 2003, the artist moved permanently to Beijing where, during these years, he developed a body of art and a strong conceptual approach in cultural references, rich in poetry and symbolism, and beautiful in form, which has aroused continuous criticism.
Dai Guangyu, he has created a system of codes and symbols that has intensified along with the progress of his installations and performances. For example, it uses black Chinese ink pots or porcelain, symbols of the complexity of Chinese culture, flour to evoke the basic food of the community and finally also men with faces painted in white and gold as metaphors of Westernization or the pursuit of wealth.
He argues that through the act of performance, a temporary action that passes from one state to another, all solid forms belong to a single moment and that all circumstances are in the process of transformation.
His installations and his photographs maintain a trace of this “state of procreation” which is the essence of the performance and gives a poetic intonation to the forms.
In 2017 the artist realizes the performance The Failure of Defense-America, 2017.
During the performance he expresses his personal struggles against having to live under a repressive political regime. Dai Guangyu through the performance of the performance wants to move the focus, which originally is based on the ideological and class division in China, to the forces that threaten the American nation.
By painting the seemingly empty white paper that covered the stage with black and red ink, the outlines of a series of critical and consequential relationships emerged, asking questions about where we are all in relation to the character and inclusiveness of today’s nation.
Dai Guangyu is now recognized as an important and original figure in the Chinese art scene. His interdisciplinary practice is written within a socially engaged trajectory.
Through his performances, photographs, paintings or calligraphy, he stages his body and the symbolism of Chinese society until the end of their resistance or their disappearance.
Exhibitions:
2005 Artists in Action – Performance Art Project, HongKong, China
2005 Inward Gazes – Performance Art in China Exhibition by Invitation, Macau Art Museum, Macau
2005 In Honour of ‘85, Duolun Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2005 Transborder Language: Performance Art /Language Art, Tokyo Art Projects, 798 Factory, Beijing, China
2004 Double Happiness Festival, Tokyo Art Projects, 798 Factory, Beijing, China
2004 Matchmaking, Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, China
2003 NIPAF: Asia Central Europe, Performance Art Meeting 2003, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland
2003 Chinese Ink in Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Kualalumpur, Malaysia
2003 China – Japan Performance Art Exchange Project / 2003, Chengdu, Xian, Chongqing, China
2002 Fruitfulness – Contemporary Art Exhibition, Beijing Agriculture Hall, Beijing, China
2002 Food and Words, Performance, Chengdu, China (solo)
2002 Shooting at Myself, Installation and Performance, Duisburg University, Germany (solo)
2001 Physical Resources and Objects, Hong Kong, China
2001 Dialogo – Other, Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Chiesa Santa Teresa dei Maschi, Bari, Italy
2001 Chinese Festival – Touring Art Exhibition, Faust Museum, Hannover, Germany
2001 First Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu Museum of Modern Art, Chengdu, China
2000 Heaven Stonehenge, Hannover, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Germany
2000 Turn of the Century – 1979-1999 – Chinese Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art Chengdu, China
2000 Chinese Glamours – Conceptual Images, East Link Gallery, Shanghai, China
1997 How a Frog in a Well Sees the Sky, Open Exhibit, 152B Studio, Chengdu, China (solo)
1996 Resurrection in Chengdu ‘96, Installation, Sichuan University, China (solo)
1995 Scenery Inside and Outside a Red Room, Installation, Chengdu, China (solo)
1994 Chinese Landscape, Installation, Chengdu, China (solo)
1993 Dai GuangYu – Exhibition of Paintings, Lallouzet Waterson, Montreal, Canada
References:
http://ifa-gallery.com/artists/dai-guangyu/
https://www.inkstudio.com.cn/artists/64-dai-guangyu/overview/
https://www.artsy.net/artist/dai-guangyu-dai-guang-yu?page=1&sort=-partner_updated_at
https://ocula.com/artists/dai-guangyu/
http://www.artnet.com/artists/dai-guangyu/biography
http://www.artlinkart.com/en/artist/overview/3f8iy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqznqeoCfRU