Notes

Guo Hongwei graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 2004. The artist is living and working in Beijing.
His quietly powerful portraits, based on snapshots from his childhood, are notable for their sparse use of colour: the artist isolates the most personally meaningful figures in a photograph, translates them into shades of blue and grey, and then places them on the canvas against a neutral background. The resulting monochrome paintings are reminiscent of fine Chinese porcelain, while also referencing the traditions of black and white photography. Guo Hongwei believes memories are imprinted on the brain, like marks. These can be deep or shallow, strong or vague. He feels that memories are continuously altered with new marks, which destroy or cover old ones.

He uses art to recall his childhood, with paintings based on childhood images. Originally clear and sharp, these images are transformed into blurred marks to mimic the way memory operates on the past. He makes images that look less like pictures and more like stains that cannot be dissolved.