The Grand Tour · 2026 China Academy of Art (CAA) Graduation Season has come to a successful close. Graduates from 20 academic units responded to the times with art and explored the future through creativity, unfolding a youthful narrative of ideals, journeys, and growth across the city and campus, transforming Hangzhou into an open art venue that gathers intellectual power, creativity, and action.

The China Academy of Art is proud to launch the "Youth Insights" series, which continues to focus on topics such as avant-garde experimentation, humanities and technology, rural academies, A better China, rooted construction, people-centered, poetic cinema, visual sinology, Eastern design, and overseas insights. The series closely follows how young creators measure the world with their footsteps and respond to the times with their works. Between every departure and arrival, we jointly witness the grand explorations and boundless possibilities of a new generation of artists.

Summoned by the deep call of civilizational roots and shaped by the dynamic currents of global visuality, the paintings of "visual sinology" range from the cosmological vision of "heaven and humanity as one" in landscape scrolls to the seasonal whispers of flora's cycles in watermarked woodblock prints. Though working across different media, the creators share a common commitment to "bearing witness through images and conveying the Way through art." Whether through the refined brushwork on rice paper that carries the spirit of literati tradition, or the woodblock explorations that preserve cultural heritage, both paths trace the deep grammar of Chinese visual experience. Within a global historical framework, these works are not mere replicas of tradition, but experimental reconstructions—where brush and knife converge—to forge a "visual atlas" that spans scroll and print, uniting the cultivation of the mind with the mastery of craft.

The Legend of Mount Buzhou

Artist: Chen Hao

College/School:

School of Chinese Painting

Supervisors:

Chen Lei, Chen Mingkun

Medium:

Chinese Painting

Artist Statement

"In ancient times, Gong Gong fought with Zhuan Xu for the throne. Enraged, he struck Mount Buzhou, breaking the pillar of heaven and severing the cords of earth. Heaven tilted toward the northwest, causing the sun, moon, and stars to shift; Earth sank in the southeast, so waters and dust settled there."

"Buzhou" may imply incompleteness or imperfection. Mount Buzhou perhaps serves as a metaphor for a node of transformation. Its story describes the collapse of the old order—and from it, a new world grows. Myths have always been subject to interpretation; the world is forever in flux between rupture and reconstruction, and every individual's growth unfolds through choice and creation. An incomplete myth can be filled by imagination. An unfinished life—we are forever exploring.

Advisor's Message

Taking the myth of Mount Buzhou as its subject and employing the brushwork of Wang Meng as a stylistic reference, this work demonstrates considerable cultural depth and imaginative scope. The piece extracts the theme of order collapsing and the world rebuilding from the ancient myth of "Gong Gong striking the mountain," interpreting Mount Buzhou as a symbol of change, rupture, and rebirth—reflecting the artist's contemporary reimagining of traditional mythology. The use of Wang Meng's dense, vast, and layered brushwork to depict Mount Buzhou effectively reinforces the mountain's massiveness and spiritual gravity, resonating with the celestial upheaval and the shifting landscape of the myth. The work does not merely reproduce the mythological scene, but employs the notion of "incompleteness" to express the choices, explorations, and reconstructions inherent in the growth of life. Overall, the piece demonstrates a clear conceptual framework, well-grounded brushwork, and a strong spiritual orientation. Further intensifying the interplay between openness and density in the composition, as well as the rhythmic variations in the mountain's structural forms, would enhance the work's mythological atmosphere and visual tension.

Chen Hao

Born in 2004, currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree at the China Academy of Art.