Simone Guo: Melancholia Dreamland

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Simone Guo, "Innis Free," 2017

acrylic on canvas, 60" x 36"

Opening Reception on Friday, May 4, 3 - 6pm. Artist Simone Guo will be in attendance

Art Beatus (Vancouver) Consultancy Ltd is very pleased to present Melancholia Dreamland, a solo exhibition of landscape paintings by local artist Simone Guo. Wonderfully chimerical in colour palette and form, Guo describes this series of acrylic paintings and mixed media as “hovering between landscape and lyrical abstraction”. The artist does not paint these works from real life but rather she “paints landscape as a concept.”

While working on this series, Guo consciously distilled aesthetic and philosophical inspiration from traditional Chinese monochromatic landscape paintings. She explains her affinity for landscape painting as a medium for her and her audience “to seek inner rhythm and autonomy, just as the traditional Chinese landscape painting indulged a spiritual freedom or refuge for the elite class in context of a social/political turmoil.”

In Guo's beautifully constructed abstract worlds, her masterfully spontaneous and gestural mark-making forms are highly suggestive of the topography of its landscape. One experiences the ascending massive mountains, the undulating hills and valleys, the terrifying sheer rock faces in “Refuge”, as well as the animated motion of bodies of water such as in “On the Other Side” and “Bridal Falls”. This collection of paintings invite a spirit of exploration into Guo's landscapes as well as evoke a nostalgic longing for escape and retreat into these colourful realms.

Currently living and working in Vancouver, Simone Guo was born in China and is part of an artistic family. She studied at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China where she completed a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Art History, and in 2004, earned another Master of Art History degree from the University of Victoria. Guo has had a number of solo exhibitions and has participated in several group exhibitions in Taiwan, China, Japan as well as in Canada, and her work can be found in collections in Asia and North America.