Teacher and Student," an exhibition of 12 contemporary artists in Shanghai, includes big names such as Yu Youhan, Ding Yi, Xu Zheng, Song Tao and Yang Fudong.

The show at ShanghART is a brief history of the development of contemporary art. It connects concepts in Chinese contemporary art in different periods through the work of these artists.

"We started to collaborate with many of these artists in the early 1990s," says Helen Yu, one of the organizers at the gallery. "Some of them are predecessors, some function as the backbone of the art circle, while some are new stars in the art community."

For example, 60-something Yu, one of the main artists of political pop emerging in the avant-garde movement in the 1990s, fuses Chinese iconography and Western artistic expression. His work has a major impact on the cultural scene, and inspired a generation of younger artists.

Compared with Yu's leadership stature, Ding is one of the so-called "middle-aged backbones."

Ding's creation "Appearance of Crosses" began in 1988. At that time, China's contemporary art, like society, was in transition involving the "assault" of modern Western culture and the reflection upon traditional Chinese culture.

The exhibition also includes young artists, some of them already big names in the art world, such as Yang and Song.

The 12 artists selected for the exhibition are like "a microcosm of the development of Chinese contemporary art," says Yu. "Their artworks unravel and reconstruct the meandering histories of the diverse environment."