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