空白空间 WHITE SPACE

Ce Jian’s work delves into the physicality of bodies and the illusionistic methods used to represent them. Across her paintings, drawings, and installations, she explores the intersection of body and space, navigating between organic growth and technical construction. Drawing from historical pictorial traditions, she reinterprets them within the framework of contemporary digital visual culture. Her work centers on the artificial structure and aesthetics of technologically transformed bodies, whether human figures or objects, employing diverse approaches to highlight their distortion and hybridization.

Ce Jian views painting as a historically rich medium that encodes both knowledge and emotions. She strives for a visual language that reflects the complexity of today’s image-saturated world. Throughout her practice, she underscores painting’s dual nature as both a tangible entity and a virtual window. Within her compositional framework, Ce Jian’s paintings reveal their own physical presence through textured, layered surfaces that combine geometric clarity with expressive gestures, color fields, and delicate drawings.

In her recent works, Ce Jian creates hybrid figures inspired by mythological beasts from European culture. These fantastical creatures are modeled in the likeness of industrial robots, blending technical components with elements drawn from art and natural history. Through fluid metamorphosis, Ce Jian explores the boundaries between the human and non-human, the biological and mechanical. She particularly focuses on the gendered concept of monstrosity, evident in both classical mythology and modern technology, where sphinxes and cyborgs converge as menacing figures characterized by their formidable composite bodies and enigmatic intelligence. The focus on the intersection between history and futurism is a central theme in her work.

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 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); Art Patrons, Qiao Space, Shanghai, China (2018); The Second Self, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2017). 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

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》