April 26 morning
Echoes of a new era:
Beijing Film Academy Contemporary Art Five-Person Exhibition
Beijing Film Academy Haidian Campus
The Four Dimensional Art Museum opens on B1 floor of Building C
The vigorous development of fine arts and calligraphy disciplines at Beijing Film Academy
Deeply meet the artistic needs of the new era
Works by five film school artists
This is a vivid reflection of this trend.
This exhibition features 43 artworks by five artists , including Sun Lijun, Li Jianping, Meng Luding, Gu Liming and Zhang Xiaoling . This exhibition is hosted by the Beijing Film Academy, organized by the School of Animation of the Beijing Film Academy and co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art of the Beijing Film Academy.
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, Chinese contemporary art has experienced ups and downs in the changes of the times, and has gradually formed a trend that cannot be ignored. Entering the new era, Chinese contemporary art has fully entered the stage of constructing a discourse system. This process is not only due to the logical development of art itself, but also closely related to the great progress of Chinese society. As an important position for China’s higher art education, the construction and development of the fine arts and calligraphy disciplines of the Beijing Film Academy, especially the improvement of the doctoral graduate training system, is deeply responding to the art needs of the new era.
The Beijing Film Academy has a profound cultural context in the construction of fine arts disciplines. Since its establishment in 1951, the Department of Fine Arts has been one of the four major departments of the academy. In 1959, the formal establishment of the Department of Film Art of the Beijing Film Academy marked the entry of the discipline into the professional stage . Since the new era, in the tide of reform and opening up, the fine arts discipline of the Film Academy has systematically entered an era of leapfrog development . In 2011, our school was approved to offer an academic doctoral degree in fine arts. In 2024, due to the adjustment of the national subject catalog, our school added a professional doctoral degree in fine arts and calligraphy, and built a high-level, practical and academic fine arts and calligraphy talent training system that covers undergraduate, master and doctoral degrees , breaking the boundaries of traditional fine arts disciplines, promoting the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies such as film, digital media, and artificial intelligence with fine arts and calligraphy, and expanding innovative paths for artistic expression . Become an important benchmark for domestic fine arts and calligraphy education.
The Fine Arts and Calligraphy discipline of Beijing Film Academy adheres to the core concept of “integration of art and technology, and equal emphasis on theory and practice” in the training of doctoral students . Relying on the advantages of film disciplines, it has formed distinctive characteristics - focusing on film, new media, digital art creation and visual culture practice, etc., aiming to cultivate fine arts and calligraphy artists, educators and a large-scale fine arts and calligraphy talent team with both moral integrity and artistic integrity, in order to respond to the country’s demand for artistic talents and make new contributions to the development of China’s cultural and artistic undertakings! The teaching philosophy and discipline characteristics of the Fine Arts discipline of Beijing Film Academy are fully reflected in the five artists participating in this exhibition.
Exhibition Information
Exhibition name: Echoes of the New Era - Beijing Film Academy Five-person Exhibition
Organizer: Beijing Film Academy
Organizer: School of Animation, Beijing Film Academy
Co-organizer: Institute of Contemporary Art, Beijing Film Academy
Exhibition time: April 26-May 20, 2025
Exhibition location: Four Dimensions Art Museum, B1, Building C, Haidian Campus, Beijing Film Academy
Participating Artists
Sun Lijun
Sun Lijun, former vice president of the Beijing Film Academy and president of the China Animation Research Institute, not only upholds the banner of the Chinese animation school, emphasizes the cultural concept of “Eastern aesthetics”, and is committed to exploring the path of animation creation in the era of artificial intelligence, but also actively engages in the creation of contemporary ink and oil paintings, forming a cultural landscape in which animation and contemporary art creation go hand in hand. He is unique in the field of contemporary Chinese art.
Li Jianping
Li Jianping, dean of the Animation School of the Beijing Film Academy, adheres to the principle of highlighting Chinese ideas and telling Chinese stories. In recent years, he has been immersed in the exploration of the integration of art and technology, and has made breakthrough progress in the combination and application of animation and digital art. The animation manuscripts he designed and drew have independent contemporary art attributes.
Meng Luding
Meng Luding, professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and part-time doctoral tutor at the Beijing Film Academy, is one of the pioneers of the 85’ art new wave. His representative work “In the New Era - The Revelation of Adam and Eve” is praised as a landmark work of Chinese contemporary art. In recent years, he has used cinnabar and realgar to reflect on his cold attitude towards reality, and also metaphorically the cultural roots of his works.
Gu Liming
Gu Liming, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University and part-time doctoral supervisor at the Beijing Film Academy, is a representative figure of Chinese abstract expressionism. Since the 1980s, he has been committed to exploring the contemporary transformation of traditional cultural resources. His “Door God” series and “Landscape Fu” series reconstruct traditional landscapes, New Year paintings and folk resources at the level of abstract expression, and his works thus present a heavy oriental philosophical meaning.
Zhang Xiaoling
Zhang Xiaoling, member of the China National Academy of Painting and distinguished professor of the Beijing Film Academy, has always explored the contemporary forms of ink, lacquer and oil painting. In his cultural concept, contemporary ink and lacquer will not only constitute the mainstream form of the Chinese contemporary art discourse system, but also will be the outstanding contribution of Chinese contemporary art to world civilization.
Art is a concept that makes people human forever. Over a long period of time, it has been carried through human society, presenting rich and diverse colors in different cultural contexts and eras. The material changes of oil paint, lacquer, and ink; the forms of paper, pen, installation, and animation flow, today’s art is the echo of the new era of enlightenment. Respecting teachers and passing on the torch , the construction of fine arts disciplines is to keep the flame of art alive. In the education of fine arts disciplines, not only is the bond of cultural identity nurtured, but also the translation of tradition and contemporary is completed.
This five-person exhibition is not only a concentrated presentation of the achievements of the film academy’s fine arts discipline construction, but also a clear expression of the film academy’s fine arts discipline development concept. I believe that the philosophical concepts, creative paths, practical methods and aesthetic experiences of this exhibition will be effectively implanted into the teaching practice of fine arts at the film academy, and make a unique contribution to the construction of a fine arts teaching system with film academy characteristics. In the future, Beijing Film Academy will continue to deepen the professional construction of fine arts and calligraphy disciplines, optimize the doctoral training mechanism, promote the coordinated development of academic research and artistic practice, further enhance the leading role of the discipline in the national higher art education, and contribute unique strength to the innovation and prosperity of Chinese contemporary art!
