L-Art Gallery (Shenzhen) presents exhibition of He Duoling and Mao Xuhui

“People in Time,” a dual exhibition featuring artists He Duoling and Mao Xuhui, opened Oct. 28 at L-Art Gallery (Shenzhen) in Futian District. Curated by art historian Lü Peng, it runs through Dec. 26.

The exhibition takes the human figure as its starting point, examining a subject that has been central to Chinese artistic practice since the 1980s. It follows two paths — the “spiritual man” and the “situated man” — and asks two questions: How does a person become oneself, and how does one confront the world one inhabits?

Visitors view the exhibition "People in Time" at L-Art Gallery (Shenzhen). Photos by Chang Zhipeng

He turns inward, exploring the “spiritual man” through realist imagery. In his “Double Screen” series, contemporary figures share the picture plane with canonical works from art history. The sitters become spiritual portraits that carry cultural memory.

Mao, by contrast, draws on recurring figures, spaces and symbols to transform personal experience into a visual language with broader resonance. Through expressive works, he looks outward toward the “situated man,” questioning the conditions of human existence and the relationship between people and the world around them.

In the works on view, both artists return to their pasts, revisiting youth and memory. Each return offers a new understanding of the past and of time itself. The exhibition’s “people in time” are both shaped by time and preserved through art. Though time passes, spirit, memory and circumstance remain in the picture.

Gan Ting, director of L-Art Gallery (Shenzhen) leads visitors on a tour. 

By bringing the two artistic approaches into dialogue, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the time they themselves inhabit, moving between inner life and external circumstances.

He is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese realist painting. His early work “Spring Breeze Has Already Awakened” (1982) left a lasting impression on a generation.

Mao is a central figure in modern art in southwest China. Since the 1980s, his expressive style has helped shape the development of Yunnan’s “new figurative” painting movement.

Working respectively in realism and expressionism, the two artists have helped shape the history of contemporary Chinese painting. The exhibition brings their work together in a significant presentation of two distinctive paths in Chinese art.