Beijing Dangdai Art Fair 2026 will take place from May 21 to 24 at Hall 11 of the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, with May 21 to 22 as VIP Preview Days and May 23 to 24 as Public Days. Under the theme “LAND TRACE,” this year’s edition re-examines cultural differences and uneven experiences through the lens of geography and historical geography across multiple contexts, further delineating the detailed landscape of contemporary art amid a moment of value reshaping.

We will be releasing a series of posters centered on works featured at the Fair. These works not only offer possible interpretations of and responses to “LAND TRACE,” but also serve as preview highlights of key artworks and participating institutions. The poster shared in this edition features a work by Zeng Jianyong from Soul Art Center — an ink painting marked by the artist’s distinctive personal style.

About the Artwork

Zeng Jianyong
Folk Landscape · Wind Still
Ink on paper
2025
180 × 140 cm
©Courtesy of the Artist and Soul Art Center

Folk Landscape draws upon the humanistic and naturalistic spirit of shan shui (mountain-and-water painting) as it has been transmitted through the intertwined traditions of Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and painting, while seeking a contemporary and deeply individual mode of landscape expression. The title Folk Landscape is inspired by the Confucian saying, “If the rites are lost, seek them in the folk” (礼失而求诸野), suggesting that when moral order declines, traces of wisdom may still be found among the people. For Zeng Jianyong, however, “the folk” is understood less as a social body than as the natural world itself—a realm embedded within both collective and personal memory, and one that holds profound and revelatory forms of knowledge.

The composition of this work is grounded in a calligraphic sensibility. Through the continuous layering, interweaving, and accumulation of lines and forms, it generates an abstract logic of shifting perspectives and continuous space. In this series, Zeng seeks to distill a set of formal principles from traditional landscape painting—ways of observing and expressing nature—in order to construct a landscape world and an abstract visual language that are both rooted in Chinese tradition and deeply his own.

About the Artist

Portrait of Artist
©Courtesy of the artist and Soul Art Center

1971 Born in Chenghai, Guangdong

1994 Graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Huaqiao University, major in Chinese Painting 

1995 Completed the Printmaking Assistant Teacher Training Program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts 

 Currently lives and works in Beijing

Selected Individual Exhibitions:

2026 Abide in Orchard, Soul Art Center, Beijing 

2025 Paper Garden, Hermes Maison, Shanghai 

2024 One-act Plays, XY Gallery, Guangzhou 

2022 Riverside Greenway, One Art Museum, Beijing

2021 Tangram, Soka Art, Beijing 

2021 Generation of Infinity，Powerlong Museum, Shanghai