The elder brother of fellow artist, Guo Jin, Guo Wei has been classified as one of China’s most important realist painters, who like his brother, has used children as the metaphorical link between exploring the politics of the culture and the soul.

Born in 1960 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, he graduated from the Print Department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. From the outset of his career, his distinct style and choice of subject matter placed him at the forefront of a very select community of artists.  Beginning with a series of works painted after photographic portraits of his daughter, the emphasis has remained firmly rooted in the darker aspects of the intersections between youth and urban contemporary culture.  Resolute in the belief that a child’s understanding of culture is metaphoric of the reality of the rest of the living world, his subject matter has remained rooted in his use ‘gaming’ scenes of urban youth to highlight the darker forces at play in the deeper and more harmful games of the adult world.

Without doubt, he seeks an understanding of the deeper psychological issues at play both in relationships and with an individual’s understanding of their own identity.  His work, throughout the 1990s, remained fixed in a pessimistic and rather brutal view of the essence of human nature in contemporary life. He paints, ‘concisely and fluently, with sure strokes on sparse backgrounds,’  using the bleakness of colour to underscore the immense negativity of his composition.

Yet as noted by several critics, his recent works have manifested a more tranquil tone that has been infused with the humour of role playing and dreaming that is far more characteristic of the work of his brother, Guo Jin.  In doing so, he has opened up both himself and his painting to a new element of freedom and creativity that has only enforced interest in the thematic narrative of his artistic career.


Selected Exhibition

     1995     The History of Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition from Realism to Post-Modernism, Gallerie
       Theoremes, Brussels
1997    China Now! Kulturpojeckte, Basel
1999    The 14th Asian International Art Exhibition, Fukouoka Asian Art museum, Japan
2002    Paris-Peking, Espace Pierre Gallery, Beijing
2003    From China with Art, Indonesia National Gallery, Jakarta

Collections
   
   San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
   Shanghai Art Museum
   Guy and Miriam Ullens Foundation