Simon Chiatante

Many recent art exhibitions in Shenzhen have showcased AI interactive installations, generative experiments between machine and human, digital design, poster collages, or titanic photographic impressions. Sometimes one wonders whether painting, sculpting, or carbon drawing still makes sense or even exists.

Yet, out in the suburbs of Shenzhen, between old malls, subway stations, and new tenements, there is a tiny village, where visual art is practiced without fuss and pomposity.

Once you enter Dafen Oil Painting Village, you will get lost in a new reality. Hundreds of shops, workshops, small galleries, and a big official art gallery at the center, plus hundreds of residents and convenience stores, bars and restaurants — all revolve around the business of art.

People from all over China contact the artists here to commission original works, copies of Chinese or Western masterpieces, family portraits for walls at home, and ink painting of the Yellow Mountain or the Great Wall for the office.

Entering the village from the end near Dafen Metro Station, one will notice a shop with a perfect portrait of Robert De Niro immortalized in his 60s. Some more shops remind visitors that painting brushes can be crafted in every size imaginable.

One can explore the main official gallery, or decide to wander into the minor streets. Copies of Van Gogh are displayed side by side with new original paintings made with that style. A huge Buddha sculpture catches the visitor unawares as they walk past the many abstract decorative pieces. An abandoned huge painting of the Yellow Mountain has a tear on the canvas. This classic subject is traditionally painted on rice paper, but this one was attempted on canvas with watercolors.

Shops teaching amateurs and passers-by how to use oil colors to paint beckon visitors to come and enjoy a moment of pastel freedom. Vines, leftover canvases and frames, walls painted on purpose and little gadget stalls become a classic background for snapshot shared on social media — the only reason to visit for some.

Among the complex lattice of this small art world, it is really hard to discern a masterpiece; but isn’t this the constant in every art village? If you come often, you may be lucky enough to find some real masters and make friends.

Last year, traditional ink-painter Zheng Taijun, famous for his spontaneous Zen style, set up a studio called Yi Ye (One Leaf). The studio was filled all the time with music, tea and ink art. Now that the studio is gone, some say he’s exhibiting in Paris, other claim he’s painting somewhere in the Wutong Mountain.

In another small studio, artist Liu Wenquan continues to weave a melancholic dream filled with still life objects, women, imagined Qing Dynasty men, and symbolic animals in oils.

(Simon Chiatante is a language teacher, translator and author from Italy.)