On November 25th, 2011, the special invitation only exhibition themed as Lin Xudong, Chen Danqing, Hanxin—The Story of Four Decades was opened and held by the Museum of China Academy of Oil Painting. Organized by China Academy of Oil Painting, Chinese National Academy of Arts and co-organized by the Art Bazaar, its opening ceremony is scheduled for 3:00 pm on November 25th, 2011 and it will continue until December 14th.

Lev Shestov said, “Man is the uncompleted possibility on the changing way to the reality.” Time, friendship and art are the themes of this exhibition with stories and works of these three artists during their forty years’ acquaintance as its main thread. The narration of ideals in their youth and traces of their practices in oil paintings reflect their friendship around art. For forty years, these three old friends from Shanghai have experienced dramatic ups and downs: Lin Xudong has turned from oil painting to printmaking, then to film and back to oil painting again; Chen Danqing’s painting and writing career has been well known to the public; Han Xin is a typical freelance artist having grown from a youth withhin the context of the Cultural Revolution, his art tour starts from Shanghai, to the United States, then to Beijing. In this story over four decades, Chen Yifei, Liu Xiaodong and Jia Zhangke have been the three witnesses of this long-term friendship. Respective statements of these three old friends provide us with an opportunity to come into the time tunnel and witness how the self-taught generation during the Cultural Revolution has become talented, which also gives us real contrasts and reflections on the art education of today.

Among the exhibits on display together with its catalogue, the exhibition is divided into four parts according to a period of ten years. In addition to paintings, literal narrations of these three painters are interspersed with a number of historical photos which are full of memories and details. As young intellectuals in the early stage of creation to freelance artists at a later stage, they keep their individual profile while remaining a distance from systems and “Jianghu” (means complicated social relations), providing a mature alternative text for the pattern of contemporary art.