GUO JIAN
Curated by John McDonald
GUO JIAN
Curated by John McDonald
GUO JIAN
NOTHING ABOUT EROTIC BUT PLAYBOY
NOTHING ABOUT EROTIC BUT PLAYBOY
CURATOR
JOHN MCDONALD
16 APR - 7 JUN 2025
Ground Floor, 317 Pacific Hwy, North Sydney NSW 2060
VIP PREVIEW
16 - 18 Apr 2025
10 am - 6 pm
OPENING & MEET THE ARTIST
Saturday 26 Apr 2025
1 - 3 pm
Guo Jian was born in Duyun in the south-western province of Guizhou in 1962. Small by Chinese standards, the city has a population slightly larger than Newcastle in the Hunter Valley. He was young enough to escape the worst of the Cultural Revolution, but not its aftermath. When the Red Guards descended on Duyun, Guo Jian’s grandfather was offered a post in the new order. He refused and was executed as a traitor.
Guo Jian’s father was in the People’s Liberation Army at the time, serving in another part of the country. He would return home to find that his father had become a victim of an ideological campaign enforced by the PLA.
As Guo Jian grew up, he did all the things small boys tend to do, playing with toy guns and imagining himself the hero of one action-packed scenario after another. In 1979 he would join the PLA, seeing it as the only way he could avoid spending his life in the provinces, but also seduced by the false glamour of army life peddled by state propaganda.
He once told Linda Jaivin that the official slogans referred to soldiers as “the most lovable people”. To a hormone-fuelled teenager this meant: “If I don’t get killed, I’m definitely going to get the prettiest girlfriend!”
Nobody volunteers for the army thinking they are going to be killed, but few are prepared for the training and brainwashing that lies in store.
The day-to-day routine was a sustained process of dehumanisation, as soldiers learned how to kill their enemies most efficiently, and how to execute captives with a single shot. Guo Jian portrays these activities in his ink drawings of soldiers looking like small children playing war games. He remembers his fellow soldiers as normal people moulded to accept violence as a way-of-life. Years later, when his army days were long gone, he would imagine himself as one of those provincial soldiers brought to Beijing to fire on protestors in Tiananmen Square.
To keep the troops in high spirits, the army would lay on entertainments, such as a performance by an attractive army singer. One famous example is Peng Liyuan, who would go on to marry Xi Jinping and become “first lady” of China.
The most exciting, officially sanctioned entertainment in those days was the Revolutionary Model Opera, The Red Detachment of Women, which allowed a glimpse of a corps de ballet dancing in shorts and army uniforms. There were eight model operas approved by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, which were performed over and over, but The Red Detachment of Women was by far the sexiest.
Guo Jian would spend four years in the army, working mainly as a propaganda artist. He would go on to study Classical Chinese Art and Culture at the Central Minorities Institute in Beijing from 1985-89. A decade after leaving the army he was still haunted by his experiences, which would become a permanent theme in his work. When the Tiananmen Square uprising occurred in 1989, he was living in an illegal artists’ village in Yuanmingyuan. He joined the hunger strike in the Square and would spend the day of 4 June carrying the injured to the hospital.
At this point, Guo Jian had become a dissident, with no career path ahead of him. His salvation came in the form of an Australian girlfriend, whom he would marry in the expectation of being allowed to leave China. It would take a further three years, and a thawing of relations between Beijing and Canberra, before he was issued with a passport. He arrived in Australia in 1992, taking up English language lessons and manual labouring jobs, before he made his mark as an artist.
His breakthrough came in 1998, with his participation in a show of Chinese émigré artists called Beyond China, held in Campbelltown, and a solo exhibition at the Tin Sheds Gallery at Sydney University. His satirical, Pop-style paintings of Chinese army life came to the attention of legendary art dealer, Ray Hughes, who would host regular exhibitions, enabling Guo Jian to become a full-time artist. In 2000, a survey exhibition was held at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, and Heide Park in Melbourne. At the same time National Gallery of Australia acquired two paintings for its permanent collection.
Guo Jian would return to China in 2005, where he took his work in new directions and became a restaurant owner, but his militant attitude towards the government did not disappear. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen incident in 2014, he created an extraordinary diorama of the Square covered in raw pork mince. Four days later he was arrested, detained for 15 days, then deported to Australia, with a ban preventing him from returning to China for five years. With the tightening of attitudes under Xi Jinping, he has not been back.
Today, Guo Jian lives in the Central Coast, making paintings and photographic works, and is one of the few Australian-based Chinese to feature in the White Rabbit Collection. The works in Nothing About Erotic but Playboy – the Chinglish is deliberate - include iconic paintings of the early 2000s, still in his possession, and a new series in which he revisits those army themes he has never been able to forget. Once again, we meet the army singers, the manic-looking soldiers, and The Red Detachment of Women, but perhaps the most striking image in the series shows a group of soldiers watching a real ballet with tears in their eyes. Guo Jian remembers how starved everyone was for even the smallest trace of beauty.
A painting that stands out from this group is Guo Jian’s take on Robert Capa’s famous photograph from the Spanish Civil War, The Falling Soldier (1936). It’s a self-portrait in which he portrays the fate that could have befallen him, had he stayed in the army. Soldiers may have been “the most lovable people”, but they were also the most likely to die on the job.
Every time we see a copy of Playboy magazine in one of these pictures, it has been substituted for Mao’s little red book, more formally known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. First issued in 1964, the book became the Bible of Communist China, treated as a sacred document and font of all wisdom during the Cultural Revolution. The smiles meant to indicate admiration for Mao are translated into acts of leering voyeurism, as soldiers ogle the pin-up girls. Guo Jian remembers how a reproduction of Ingres’s Neo-classical nude, The Source (1820-56), brought a constant stream of soldiers to his workshop. A copy of Playboy would have caused a stampede.
Guo Jian has gone searching for historical photos that fit his purposes, including one of Lei Feng, the fairytale model soldier the authorities held up as an example to everyone else. “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng!” was the rallying cry, greeted with supreme scepticism by those who had grown tired of hearing about this revolutionary Goody Two-Shoes. The idea that Lei Feng might have featured on the cover of Playboy is pure blasphemy to his sacred memory.
These Playboy paintings, and the larger images of runty soldiers wearing sunglasses that make them look like blind men, or a particularly deluded breed of hipster, show Guo Jian’s wit at its most mordant and savage. Whatever pornography might be found in the pages of a famous girlie magazine, pales into insignificance alongside the pornography of violence and ideological rectitude absorbed by those unwitting soldiers from the provinces. The black-and-white tones of these pictures, represent a worldview that was equally black-and-white, in which Mao and the Party were the very word of the law. If it’s not entirely a matter of nostalgia, that’s because Xi Jinping, who has declared himself President for life, seems intent on winding back the clock. Those days of smiling soldiers and trumped-up revolutionary fervour may soon be coming around again.
(Curator John McDonald)
(Curator John McDonald)
Curator John McDonald
John McDonald is Australia’s most influential art critic, having served as long-term columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald for over three decades. He is known for his incisive and insightful writing, which can be found on his site, Everything the artworld doesn’t want you to know (Everythingthe.com). A judge of many art awards, and a former Head of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia, John was the curator for the landmark NGA exhibition, ‘Federation: Australian Art and Society 1901-2000’. His work is known around the world, with Chinese art being a topic of special interest.
According to Guo Jian, his artistic expression and creation are deeply rooted in his personal life experiences and family history.
Growing up in the late years of the Cultural Revolution, he and his peers sported military style caps, skipped school and roamed the streets. In fact, the school was closed for an entire year. One day, one of schoolmates showed up wearing a pair of very dark sunglasses, causing huge excitement among the group. In those days, sunglasses were associated with villains in novels and films. Ironically, when revolutionary characters wore sunglasses as a way of disguising themselves as villains for the revolutionary cause, they looked exceptionally heroic and stylish. In our town, youngsters who dared to show off wearing sunglasses were privately idolised as “smooth gangsters” who were seen as being influenced by bourgeois ideology, before the word “cool” came around as a popular catchphrase.
As revolutionary, idealistic, and artistic youths, we were greatly drawn to the idea of looking and behaving like “smooth gangsters” we saw in fiction and films We wore military caps, dangled cigarettes from our lips, and sported sunglasses. However, the only sunglasses available to us were of very poor quality - dark as thick ink that you could not see through them. Egged on by my schoolmates to chat up with a pretty girl in the town, I put on my mate’s super-dark sunglasses and went up to the girl. As I could not see anything, by the time I felt that I got close to the girl, I could only see her shoes by looking down beneath my sunglasses. Before I opened my mouth, I was slapped hard in the face. My schoolmates laughed hysterically as I stood there, stunned, humiliated, and embarrassed. Wearing the super-dark sunglasses had blinded me, making me oblivious to danger.
My father was conscripted into the army when he was 14 years old. He had no idea that his father and two uncles had been classified as evil landlords and sentenced to death. By the time he was discharged and returned home, his father and two uncles were gone. His mother had remarried and moved to a remote village. Their house had been confiscated by the village revolutionary committee.
When I joined the army at 17, both my parents and I knew I would be sent to the battlefield. But growing up as a revolutionary idealist, I, along with my generation and my father’s generation, worshipped heroism. Soldiers fighting on the battlefield were symbols of that heroism. Yet our idealism was blind, just as I had been blinded by those super-dark sunglasses. We were oblivious to the risks and dangers right in front of our eyes. This reflection led me to create this series of paintings featuring figures wearing sunglasses. When we become blind idealists, we cannot see the dangers and harm around us. We also grow numb due to a lack of love and affection.
When I was in high school, we were not allowed to read books labelled as counter-revolutionary or listen to songs banned for promoting “pornographic emotions”. To get around this, we hid banned books inside volumes of Mao Zedong Thoughts, pretending we were reading Mao Zedong Thoughts. At midnight, under the covers with a flashlight, we copied the lyrics of banned songs. I continued doing this during my time in the army and later on at university.
Growing up in China during those days, we were so familiar with the officially promoted cover figures on magazines, books, and posters. These figures were as popular in China as cover girls on Playboy magazines were in the West, though for entirely different reasons and purposes. In my artwork, I experiment with image swapping and overlaying to create a contemporary visual effect. There is no pornographic intent. Rather, I explore the juxtaposition of two distinctive types of popular imagery, from different eras and contexts, to reconstruct a contemporary viewing experience.
(Chinese by Guo Jian. English by Proessor Jing Han)
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Untitled No.1 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
122 x 183 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Untitled No.2 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
126 x 177 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Untitled No.3 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
102 x 137.5 cm
POA
Guo Jian
Nothing About Erotic But Playboy A (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
102 x 137.5 cm
POA
Guo Jian
Nothing About Erotic But Playboy B (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
117 x 117 cm
POA
Guo Jian
Nothing About Erotic But Playboy C (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
122 x 183 cm
POA
Guo Jian
Nothing About Erotic But Playboy D (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
102 x 137.5 cm
POA
Guo Jian
Nothing About Erotic But Playboy E (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
137.5 x 102 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Untitled No.1 (2024)
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 300 cm
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, NFS
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Playboy No.4 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 45.5 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Trigger Happy No.7 (2000)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Trigger Happy No.9 (2008)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Untitled No.9 (2004)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
Reserved
Guo JianOil on canvas
Untitled No.5 (2007)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
Reserved
Guo JianOil on canvas
Untitled No.3 (2000)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Bubbles of Yam (2000)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Untitled No.5 (2008)
Acrylic on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Untitled No.8 (2009)
Oil on canvas
152 x 213 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
Untitled No.1 (2001)
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
The Drill (2003)
Oil on canvas
100 x 80 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Playboy No.1 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 45.5 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Playboy No.2 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 46 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Playboy No.3 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 45.5 cm
POA
Guo JianAcrylic on canvas
Playboy No.4 (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 45.5 cm
POA
Guo JianOil on canvas
1979 (2021)
Oil on canvas
49.5 x 59.5 cm
POA
LIMITED RELEASE
As one of the most resonant voices in Chinese contemporary art, Guo Jian has produced very few new works in recent years. Each piece from this rare body of work has drawn strong interest from collectors, and anticipation for this exhibition is exceptionally high.
To ensure fairness and equal access, all works will be released in-gallery only at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, 16 April. There will be no early access, advance sales, or reservations.
The full collection will be available for preview only in the lead-up to the exhibition. If you would like to receive a priority update when sales open, we invite you to join the official waitlist.
This exhibition presents a rare opportunity to acquire works from a limited series by one of the most influential Chinese artists of his generation.
郭健的艺术创造本质上是一种祛魅仪式：打碎墨镜的黑色滤镜，撕裂军装的规训外衣，暴露Playboy与革命宣传共享的欲望机制。这种创作不是简单的符号游戏，而是通过物件的解体重构，迫使观者直视被遮蔽的历史真相——当一代人戴着意识形态墨镜在黑暗中狂欢，当军装下的躯体早已被时代暴力穿透，那些称为“痞”的僭越姿态，或许正是个体性在认知裂缝中生长的证明。他创作的人物往往呈现出脸谱化的特征，类似于文革时期的样板画。这种脸谱化不仅体现出个体在集体主义语境中的无意识服从，更强调了个性被意识形态所抹杀的现实。艺术家借由这种刻板化的视觉表达，凸显出社会环境对个人心理与行为潜移默化的控制，进一步揭示了个体在强大的社会规范和理想主义叙述下的无意识状态。郭健用自身的创伤记忆烧穿了集体意识的厚重帷幕，让那些被遮蔽的、被美化的、被禁忌的，都在画布上显露出本来的血色。
“文革后期，我跟一帮同学戴着军帽天天想着法子逃学闲荡。事实上学校有一整年是停课的。有一个同学突然带来一副墨镜，把我们激动坏了。那时墨镜还只是坏人出现在电影或文革体的文学描述中的标配。但是革命人物因为革命需要而戴上墨镜假扮敌人和坏人，就被形容成格外的英武潇洒。那个时代我们那个地方最早敢于戴着墨镜横行的普通人尤其普通青年，是被视为受资本主义影响的资产阶级“香风毒草”，是小痞子流氓。学坏是我们那帮在革命理想文艺和资产阶级的“香风毒草”双重诱惑中“痞”的时尚。那个时候，还没有酷这个词，“痞”就是相当酷的意思。有副墨镜戴着，你就有了又革命又坏蛋的“痞”了。着戴军服军帽，叼着烟，架副墨镜，你就可以跟那些架副墨镜，烫个卷发或者“爆炸头”被视为小痞子流氓的青年一样“痞”，去横行潇洒“耍马子”（泡妞的过去用法）。“马子”在我们那里是同时有坏女孩和漂亮女孩的另一个混合代名词。那时的墨镜大都质量低劣，大多都是黑乎乎几乎什么都看不见的“跟墨一样黑的真正的墨镜”。我同学突然带来的那副墨镜，就是一副真正跟墨一样黑的墨镜。我看同学戴着很“痞”的样子，心想我戴着别人看我也一样“痞”。有一天在公园里，我们看见一个比我们大得多的女孩，在跟几个比我们小的男孩抽着烟玩大象滑梯。我那几个老油条的同学把墨镜甩给我，怂恿我这个完全没有经练的楞头上去搭讪。我以为自己有墨镜戴着，除了“痞”还掩盖了我的羞怯，就壮胆走了上去。等我摸黑走到女孩面前，从墨镜下面的余光看到的女孩的黑面布鞋来判断，我知道我已经非常近的站在了她的面前，大概一耳光的距离吧。刚艰难开口打了个招呼，我就从那副黑乎乎的墨镜里看到一闪而过的晃动，我连反应那是什么都来不及就被一耳巴打在脸上；墨镜像只罩着头的黑布袋被一把撕掉一样也被打飞掉在地上。墨镜被打飞的瞬间，我要用两秒来让眼睛从刚刚还在沉闷的黑暗中，来适应眼冒金星的眩晕和那个突然光芒四射就站面前的女孩。女孩站在逆光中，面带微笑鄙夷的说你个小狗日的，还跟老子装“痞”，快点给老子滚。我羞愧万分、无地自容的跑回轰然大笑的同学们。戴着质量低劣的墨镜，你几乎就是个瞎子。你看不到也忘记了危险。
我父亲14岁被招入军队的时候，他完全不知道他的父亲和二叔、三叔正在被划为地主被追剿最后被镇压。等他当完兵回到寨子，父亲跟二叔和三叔都没了，妈也改嫁远走他乡，老宅也被村委会充公占用。我17岁去当兵的时候，我跟我父母是知道要去打仗的。我父母觉得我去当兵是会改变因为成份不好而处处不顺的命运，尽管去打仗更危险。我完全没有打仗危险的概念。我们那代人是看战争电影长大的，以为当兵打仗是成为永远打不死的、受人景仰的英雄，是一种革命的浪漫主义情怀。是绝对的更“痞”。我不知道有多少人跟我一样，我知道穿上军装从此没有女孩会打我耳光，我已经是最“痞”的。最“痞”是当时流行的“最可爱的人”的同义词。我爸他们那代人和我们这代人的共同点，就是我们都是被时代赋予或者裹挟而成的盲目理想主义者，为了活着或者以为更浪漫的活着，我们看不到即使就在眼前的危险和伤害。由此我有了因有关理想主义而延伸开来的这批戴墨镜的作品。成为盲目的理想主义者，你不但看不到危险和伤害，同时也对爱的缺失感到麻木。
我中学的时候，突然一夜之间很多昨天还在唱的革命歌曲，就被认定为反革命的黄色歌曲（像《红梅赞》、《喀秋莎》、《莫斯科郊外的夜晚》等等），我们只能在课桌上用毛选和课本来挡着，假装看毛选和课本，悄悄在课桌抽屉里看和抄写那些黄色歌曲。后来就有了在部队抄写《少女之心、大学偷看张贤亮的〈男人的一半是女人〉的经历。都是假装在看毛选和课本。Playboy花花公子，有玩家、受欢迎的意思。是世界上最流行的成人杂志。我成长中那些在画报、海报和课本等上的封面、故事人物跟花花公子画报上的封面人物一样受欢迎，只是一个庸俗另一个严肃而已。我把它们互相置换叠加，就有了一种当代的观视效果。 Playboy 在这里没有色情意思，只有作为被动消费对象玩的双向切换的游戏意味。我试着把两种不同背景却同样流行的形象元素融合和叠加，来重构一种当代的阅读观看体验。”
限 量 购 藏 说 明
郭健作为华人当代艺术的重要代表，近年来创作极为稀缺，每一件新作都备受藏家关注。此次个展展出作品数量有限，目前已收到许多购藏预约，可谓一作难求。
本次展览将设定统一购藏开放时间：4月16日（周三）上午10点，所有参展作品将正式开放购藏（仅供线下购藏）。开展前仅开放线上预览，不接受任何形式的预定或预售。欢迎提前登记等候名单，我们将在购藏开放当日优先通知。
Appearing In This Exhibition
Jian Guo
GUO Jian was born in Guizhou in 1963. He graduated with a BA from the Central University for Nationalities (now Minzu University of China) in Beijing in 1989. From 1992 to 2014, GUO Jian lived and worked in between Australia and China. GUO Jian has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions across the world and won many awards including the 1st Prize Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize in 2000 and the 1st Prize Liverpool Art Prize in 2003. His works have also been featured in various prestigious collections, including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the Art Gallery of Queensland in Brisbane. GUO Jian’s works have been commissioned for various projects, including the backdrop for the main stage of the Big Day Out Rock Festival Tour of Australia and New Zealand, and the Visible Arts Foundation Installation Arts Project at Republic Tower in Melbourne, Australia.
