About

Ce Jian’s work centers on the visual construction of reality. She examines our empirically rationalist worldview through specific visual practices that reflect this perspective, challenging their claims to truth. Her paintings, drawings, and installations explore how the world is represented and shaped—whether through optical spatial illusions, computer simulations, technological inventions, or scientific and cultural narratives. Drawing from a broad thematic range, her works incorporate elements of the history of science and art, as well as modern technological influences and their future visions.

Rather than merely illustrating such concepts, Ce Jian creates visual models to analyze our understanding of reality. Her works consistently follow a methodology based on inquiry, material research, and construction. However, she contrasts the fundamentally rational ideas with the crafted reality of the medium, where the precision of theory meets the stubborn unpredictability of painting. Through this tension, Ce Jian aims to underscore the model-like nature of scientific concepts and technological tools while revealing the reality-generating nature of painting.

Through geometrically structured compositions and clear figure-ground relationships, she establishes an abstract framework where constructivist forms and distorted figures shift between three-dimensionality and flatness. She emphasizes the fictional potential of image creation over subjective storytelling and emotion. Its illusionistic virtuality and material complexity give painting a unique eloquence beyond language. For Ce Jian, the emotions and associations triggered in the creative process are the truly subjective aspect of her work.

Her paintings serve as metaphors for a technologically abstracted nature, oscillating between organic growth and technical artificiality. Their physical presence and portrait-like quality, as well as the relationship between the work and the viewer, are central. Recently, her focus has shifted towards the anatomy and aesthetics of hybrid bodies, blurring the lines between organic and mechanical, human and non-human. Elements from robotics, science fiction, mythology, and natural history merge in futuristic metamorphoses, giving rise to strange yet familiar monstrosities. Ce Jian’s painting is increasingly transforming from an analytical tool to one of speculative synthesis and imagination.

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Ce Jian was born in 1984 in Shandong/China and emigrated to Germany in 1988. She studied fine arts with Georg Baselitz, Daniel Richter and Robert Lucander at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she graduated as Meisterschueler in 2008. She also studied art history, philosophy and East Asian art history at the Humboldt University and Freie Universität Berlin, obtaining a M.A. (Magister Artium) degree in 2009. She received a Ph.D. in art and visual history from the Humboldt University in 2017, with a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

She currently lives and works in Berlin.

 

Solo Exhibitions 

  • 2023
    Belly of the Beast, White Space, Beijing, China
  • 2021
    Paradise, White Space, Beijing, China
  • 2019
    Words of Art, Ce Jian & Yuzheng Cheng, Yell Space, Shanghai, China
  • 2018
    Armada, White Space, Beijing, China
    On Paper 2, Zapbeijing, Beijing, China
    Bannermen, Gallery SU:, Seoul, Korea
  • 2017
    Transeuropa, Ce Jian & Yuzheng Cheng, Whiteconcepts, Berlin, Germany
    CAPTCHA, Philine Cremer Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
  • 2016
    The Grand Illusion, White Space, Beijing, China
    Elephant, NON Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • 2015
    Velum, Philine Cremer Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
  • 2014
    Projection, White Space, Beijing, China
    Frontiers, Philine Cremer Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
    Tangram, Galerie Herold, Bremen, Germany
  • 2012
    Smile Without A Face, White Space, Beijing, China
    A Maze, Galerija Contra, Koper, Slovenia
  • 2011
    The Maker, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin, Germany
    Models, Galerija Contra, Koper, Slovenia
  • 2010
    Fact=Fiction, White Space, Beijing, China
    Marco Polo. A Travel Guide, Andrew James Art, Shanghai, China
  • 2009
    1 für ALLE, Läkemäker Gallery, Berlin, Germany
  • 2008
    Wie Sie sehen…, Läkemäker Gallery, Berlin, Germany


Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2024
    Returning to the Sea, TAG Art Museum, Qingdao, China
    Worlds Beyond, Unit London, UK
  • 2023
    From the Other Hill, Guardian Art Center, Beijing, China
    Form and Meaning, Yuan Art Museum, Beijing, China
    From Body to Dream, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
    Painting Unsettled, UCCA Edge, Shanghai, China
  • 2022
    The Situation is Excellent, Glue, Berlin, Germany
    Persona and Parasite, White Space, Beijing, China
    The Hearing Trumpet: Part 1, Galerie Marguo, Paris, France
  • 2021
    Parallel Universes – Parafacts and Parafictions, designrepublic, Shanghai, China
    Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu, China
    Futurism of the Past, Beijing Contemporary Art Expo, Beijing, China
    Sonderlage, Lage Egal, Berlin, Germany
  • 2020
    El Lissitzky’s Rooms, Surplus Space, Wuhan, China
  • 2019
    A White Space Odyssey, White Space, Beijing, China
    Kunstraum Berlin, German Embassy, Beijing, Germany
    Yellow Reflection, Galerie Liusa Wang, Paris, France
    The X / Part 1, Whiteconcepts, Berlin, Germany
  • 2018
    Art Patrons, Qiao Space, Shanghai, China
    A World in a Grain of Sand, Fosun Foundation Collection, Sanya, China
    Remixing Ground: Deconstructing Damage, La Chapelle de Clairefontaine, France
  • 2017
    The Second Self, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany
    The 6th Art Sanya / Huayu Youth Award 2017, Sanya, China
    On Paper One, Zapbeijing, Beijing, China
    I’m not a robot, Ce Jian & Lin Ke, Philine Cremer Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
  • 2016
    Our Painting, Yang Art Museum, Beijing, China
    Painting As Straight Gate, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
    New Capitalism, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu, China
    B-Movie, J:Gallery, Shanghai, China
  • 2015
    Saloon, Sexauer Gallery, Berlin, Germany
  • 2014
    Painting Lesson IV, Yang Gallery, Beijing, China
  • 2013
    Aufwachen! Besser machen!, Kleine Humboldt-Galerie, Berlin, Germany

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Studio Ce Jian
Kurfürstenstraße 15-16
10785 Berlin, Germany

info@cejian.de

Contact

Studio Ce Jian
Kurfürstenstraße 15-16
10785 Berlin

info@ce-jian.com
info@cejian.de

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