The work of the artist Geng Jianyi is characterized by an uncompromising resistance to any categorical form of representation. Since the mid 1980s, when he first came to prominence within the People’s Republic of China as a seminal member of the ‘avant-garde’ movement known as the ’85 New Wave, Geng has sought to foment this resistance through the use of a wide range of techniques―including various forms of painterly transcription, staining, frottage, photographic and filmic transfer, chemical transformation and textual juxtaposition—whose conspicuously disjunctive effects constantly undermine any attempt to arrive at definitive meaning.

GENG Jianyi was born in Zhengzhou, Henan province in 1962, passed away in 2017.
Geng Jianyi graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (today: China Academy of Art, Hangzhou), Oil Painting Department. GENG Jianyi has exhibited widely since his first show in 1989. Important exhibitions include: 57th Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, VIVA ARTE VIVA, Venice (2017); Stubborn Image, OCAT Shanghai (2016);  East to the Bridge, OCAT Shenzhen (2015); Wu Zhi, Geng Jianyi Works 1985-2008, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2012); Geng Jianyi, Excessive Transition, ShanghART Beijing (2008); Important group exhibition include: GWANGJU Biennale , Korea (2014); 85 New Wave, The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art, UCCA, Beijing (2007); The 1st Guangzhou Trienniale, Guangdong Museum of Art (2002); Another Long March, Chinese Conceptual Art in the 1990’s, Breda, The Netherlands (1997); 45th Venice Biennale – Cardinal Points of the Arts, Italy (1993); China Avant-garde, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (1993); China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (1989).