Runwen Guo

Runwen Guo’s oil-based paintings of female figures dressed in common Chinese clothing are simultaneously hypnotic and removed from reality. Surrealist touches and opaque backgrounds—summoning Rembrandt and other Flemish Masters—imbue the works with a degree of fantasy. His earlier paintings portray nudes with spongey, painterly flesh, but as his style matured, his illustrations became sharper and more photorealist. With wayward glances or closed eyes, his females appear content in their natural habitat. Guo pinpoints the bliss of detachment, distancing his viewer from the subject while preserving to the physical characteristics of his subjects with painterly personality. Guo has exhibited at the China National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, Cooper Union Academy of Art, New York, Chengdu Modern Art Museum, China, and Guangzhou Art Museum, China.