Jiang Quyang: Emanation

On August 13, 2026, START Museum presents Emanation, a solo exhibition by emerging Chinese artist Jiang Quyang, as the latest installment of its “Artist Genealogy Research” project. The exhibition marks the twenty-first case study in the series and Jiang Quyang’s first solo museum exhibition. Initiated by START Museum in 2018, “Artist Genealogy Research” is an ongoing research project that has established a sustained academic platform dedicated to examining the relationship between artists’ individual genealogies and their creative practices. Through exhibited works, publications, audio and visual archives, and historical documentation, the project traces the multiple trajectories through which an artist’s practice takes shape.

Since graduating from the Department of Mural Painting at the China Academy of Art in 2008, Jiang Quyang (b. 1985) has consistently used oil painting as his primary medium of artistic exploration. By radically magnifying fragments of biological forms, he creates unfamiliar visual spectacles and perceptual dislocations, challenging established modes of narrative experience from a “microscopic” perspective. Yet his highly restrained use of color and classically inclined compositions lend his works a sensuous quality and a sense of timeless illumination. It is precisely this tension that distinguishes Jiang among a younger generation of painters, making his practice a singular case within contemporary Chinese art.