THE Shenzhen Art Museum’s Longhua division is presenting two new exhibitions that, while distinct in style and medium, both delve deep into the human condition. They offer a rare opportunity to experience the spiritual and philosophical dimensions of contemporary art.

‘This Moment Is Perfect,

Let’s Sing Now’

Curated by Chinese scholar Xu Zhiyuan, famed actor Yuan Hong, and contemporary artist and curator Zhao Jianying, this retrospective reframes more than 50 years of He Duoling’s work through thematic units that historicize his practice.

The show examines recurrent motifs — youth and women — not as static types but as ongoing spiritual events; melancholic female figures register time, memory and private affect as visible, restrained forms. Other sections position He as an “outsider” in history: His images of Yi communities and his Russian forest scenes act as internal coordinates for negotiating modernity and resisting homogenization.

Beneath poetic surfaces lies a rigorous formal discipline — “architecture as method” — and a refined “technique of sensibility.” He translates the classical Chinese ideal of spirit resonance into the tactile materiality of oil paint through near-microscopic control of brushwork, using constraint to achieve essential freedom.

Dates: Until May 15

‘Formless’

The exhibition is a career-spanning survey of Tong Yanrunan’s 28-year portrait practice, bringing together more than 1,000 works from museums and private collections in the U.S., Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere — the most complete presentation of his work to date.

Tong’s disciplined project centers on small, consistently sized oil portraits (41 × 33 cm) produced as a “face‑to‑face cultivation” over decades. His sitters range from heads of state to anonymous farmers and urban passersby, but likeness is never the aim. Through layered texture, muted color and loose, expressive strokes, Tong dissolves social markers and softens features, turning each face into an archetypal, almost geological presence.

Drawing on Daoist and Zhuangzi thoughts and the spirit of Chinese landscape painting, his portraits become channels for a “China landscape spirit” — an inward, formless resonance that transcends biography.

Working in a Western medium while grounding his sensibility in Eastern philosophy, Tong has shown widely — including the Venice Biennale — and is collected by major institutions such as the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Art Museum of China.

Dates: Until June 23

Venue: Shenzhen Art Museum (Longhua division), Longhua District (深圳美术馆新馆)

Metro: Line 4 or 6 to Hongshan Station (红山站), Exit A1(Tang Li)