The Yan Club Arts Center is exhibiting pop artist Yin Kun, who was born in 1962 in Sichuan Province. His distorted, surrealistic images---usually children and infants with outsized heads in high fashion or politics--are straightforward and strangely beautiful. Yin Kun has exhibited this year for the first time in Holland.

Also exhibiting is Han Xuejun, a native of Beijing (born in 1968). After graduating from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts with a degree in oil painting, he traveled through the Qinghai-Tibet Highlands and was inspired by the scenery, local customs and simple way of life. He invites us to discover the “spiritual charm” of vivid regional differences.

Xiao Se was born in 1970 in Beijing. He graduated from the Beijing Arts and Design School with a degree in Environmental Art. In 1990 he worked as an art designer at the Beijing Music Hall and furthered his studies at the Design Department of the Central Academy of Arts and Design in Beijing. He has been singled out as one of the emerging oil artists by the well-known Chinese art magazine, Fine Arts Research.

Red Gate Gallery exhibits western artists alongside Chinese contemporaries. Tan Ping, born in Chengde in 1960, is known for printmaking. After graduating in 1984 from the Printmaking Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Tan Ping won the West German Cultural Exchange Scholarship (DAAD) and completed a Master of Arts in the Free Art Department of Berlin Art University. Tan Ping has exhibited extensively in both Germany and China.

Lionel Bawden was born in 1974 in Auburn, New South Wales. He took a BA in visual arts and painting at the ANU Institute of the Arts, Canberra School of Art. From 1995-1996 he was a six month exchange student at the Oil Painting Workshop at China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou province. He lives and works in Sidney, Australia and exhibits extensively throughout the Pacific Rim.

Robin Best was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1953. She obtained a Graduate Diploma Visual Arts, University of South Australia and before that a Diploma in Design/Ceramics from South Australian School of Art. Her recent work researches the origins and migration of the arabesque patterns through Asia and Europe. Her work may be found in the National Gallery of Scotland, Seto Cultural Centre, Japan, Art Gallery of South Australia, and Art Gallery of Tasmania, among others.

Ri Williamson is a New Zealand artist who looks at “the current epidemic of package or ready-made housing and rolling subdivision.” After graduating from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in Sculpture, Ri Williamson exhibited installations around New Zealand, São Paulo and Hong Kong before winning a three month residency at Red Gate Gallery. As Beijing is the world’s largest construction site with the 2008 Olympics push, Ri Williamson should have more than a little local inspiration.

Wang Qiang is a conceptual artist born in Hangzhou in 1957. His theme is the deliberate and often ironic mixing of East-West, something we have seen from Chinese artists since the Eighties blossoming of the Beijing Art scene.

The art in Beijing is often startling and sometimes very tender. The new tendency toward inclusion of Western artists in Beijing will add vibrancy and dialogue which is positive and exciting.

Yan Club Arts Center

www.yanclub.com

Red Gate Gallery

www.redgategallery.com