This modern Chinese painter blows us away. In fact, AO’s first post was about Liu Baojun, but now that so many more of you are partaking of the forbidden fruit that is Arctic Oak, we thought we’d remind you how awesome he is.

Go back to the post Skill and Whimsy in Modern China for more information on Baojun/gallery links.

Liu Baojun is a modern Chinese painter whose work I encountered in the Shanghai ‘SOHO’ of New York lore, the Moganshan District. The Moganshan District is set off from droll tiers of concrete apartment skyscrapers by the low scroll of a 6 foot graffiti wall. The District itself is a maze of warehouse galleries, nooked with tiny workspaces for the artists who display there.

Liu Baojun’s work was a clear standout from the din, both in subject matter and technique. While technical excellence in China is itself not unusual, nonconformity in subject matter and technical excellence was, most certainly.

Interestingly, the women that he paints are not of the diminutive, ladylike portraiture traditional in China. Rather, the women appear in Western, Eastern and no dress and are in various positions of repose, smoking (a taboo for women in China). For me, this art does arts’ job - it is playful, beautiful and provocative in a thoughtful way. It has content that doesn’t dead end in rumination. As one of my favorite guys Jean Luc-Nancy would put it,

From the inside of (the)painting to the outside of (the) painting, there is nothing, no passage. There is painting, there is us, indistinctly, distinctly. Here, (the) painting is our access to the fact that we do not accede - either to the inside or to the outside of ourselves.

I imagine Mr. Baojun has got quite a career ahead of him. And behind him. It is difficult to find real biographical information on him or his New York exhibit. At least, so says google. Evidentally, there is another Liu Baojun who appears to be quite the geologist.

But back to Liu Baojun, the painter. His nephew works his small gallery in the Moganshan District and did tell me that his uncle is currently exhibiting in New York and Hong Kong and was kind enough to email me some photos of his uncle’s Moganshan exhibition so we can officially (and by ‘officially,’ I mean through relatively unknown blogs) start ‘repping him in the West.

View more of Liu Baojun’s work here:

and here.