空白空间 WHITE SPACE

Ce Jian’s work explores how reality is visually constructed. Through painting, drawing, and installation, she examines the visual techniques and models that shape our perception of the world. By engaging with technological, scientific, and cultural narratives, she questions a rationalist understanding of reality and its systems of representation.

A central concern in her practice is the tension between theory and matter, reflected in the interplay between a complex conceptual framework and the unruliness of painterly material. Within this dialogue, she discovers artistic freedom and insight. Her compositions oscillate between surface and depth, construction and distortion. Rather than narrating stories, she focuses on the fictive space and physical presence of the images themselves.

In recent years, her work has been driven by the idea of a utopian nature situated at the intersection of history and futurism, mythology and natural science, biology and robotics. This exploration has resulted in several series of semi-abstract figures depicting non-human cyborgs. Their hybrid morphology draws from both historical and contemporary sources, merging organic and technological elements into transformable composite bodies. Through her painting, she constructs fictive realities that are both analytical and speculative, while always remaining grounded in material presence.

Ce Jian was born in 1984 in Shandong Province, China and moved to Germany in 1988. She studied at Goldsmiths College, London from 2006-2007 and graduated in 2008 from the Berlin University of the Arts. She also earned a Magister Artium degree in Art History from the Humboldt-Universität and Freie Unversität Berlin in 2009. She received a PhD in Art and Visual History from Humboldt-Universität of Berlin in 2017. Her recent solo exhibitions include Shapeshifter, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2025); Words of Art, Kunstraum Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany (2025);Belly of the Beast, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2023); Paradise, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2021); Words of Art, Yell Space, Shanghai, China (2019); Armada, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2018); Bannermen, Gallery SU, Seoul, Korea (2018); Transeuropa, Whiteconcepts, Berlin, Germany (2017); CAPTCHA, Galerie Philine Cremer, Dusseldorf, Germany (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Returning to the Sea, TAG Art Museum, Qingdao, China (2024); Worlds Beyond, Unit London, London, UK (2024); From Body to Dream, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2023); Painting Unsettled, UCCA Edge, Shanghai, China (2023); The Hearing Trumpet, Galerie Marguo, Paris, France (2022); Sonderlage, Lage Egal, Berlin, Germany (2021). She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Ce JIAN

SELECTED WORKS

EXHIBITIONS

Belly of the Beast

Persona and Parasite

Paradise

Armada

The Grand Illusion

PROJECTION

SMILE WITHOUT A FACE

FACT = FICTION

NEWS

Ce JIAN: Shapeshifter

Returning to the Sea: Philosophical Reflections on the Anthropocene Ocean

Painting Unsettled

Super Fusion: 2021 Chengdu Biennale

简策：双色舞台

创作摘录 | 简策10条创作观点

Futurism of the Past — Contemplating the Past and Future in Chinese Contemporary Art

绘画有声｜简策：抽象的潜力

El Lisstzky’s Rooms

#on paper_未命名 简策 & 程昱峥艺术家书项目《锚》

Kunstraum Berlin

Remixing Ground: Deconstructing Damage

幻影水师

On Paper One

Jian Ce: La Grand Illusion

5 Exhibitions to see in Beijing in January 2017

Our Painting

PROJECTION

IMAGR AND PROJECTION

无法测量的经验

PROJECTION

每一个别人里面都有你自己，这并不可耻

#on paper_未命名简策 & 程昱峥艺术家书项目《锚》