Decoding creativity

Artworks by Chen Shaoxiong is on show at Minsheng Art Museum Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Since 2015, the center has collaborated with the art museum in Beijing to stage an exhibition every year of artworks featured in the annual publication.

The latest book says more than 3,780 contemporary art exhibitions were held in the country in 2016, an increase of nearly 200 compared with 2015.

The Minsheng exhibition focuses on established artists, who have spearheaded the rise of Chinese contemporary art, and also those whose works have received good reviews and market response.

The late artist Chen Shaoxiong's work The View, a four-channel video installation, is on show.

It was also on show at Chen's solo exhibition at Beijing's Tang Contemporary Art Gallery, which ended on Nov 27 in 2016, a day after Chen died.

Chen, a graduate of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, had co-founded Da Wei Xiang, an important experimental art group in Guangzhou in the early 1990s.

His conceptual works combine photographs, videos, installations and ink-brush paintings.

In his works, he examined the changing landscape of Chinese urbanization, and invited audiences to reflect on the manic and ridiculous aspects of city life.